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DISCUSS 



ON 




PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE, 



EDUCATION AND UNIVERSITY REFORM. 



CHIEFLY FROM THE EDINBURGH REVIEW; COR- 
RECTED, VINDICATED, ENLARGED, IN 
NOTES AND APPENDICES. 



BY SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON, BART. 



WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 



BY ROBERT TURNBULL, D.D. 



" Truth, like a torch, the more ifs shook it shines." 



NEW YORK: 



HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
329 & 331 PEARL STREET, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 

1856. 







LC Control Number 



tmp96 026014 



x° 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



This publication will not, I hope, be deemed superfluous. Its 
contents have, in great part, been collected and translated in 
France and Italy ; in Germany many of the Discussions have 
been separately translated ; and their general collection has once 
and again been recommended in the leading critical journals of 
America. In this country also a considerable number are com- 
prised in the " Selections from the Edinburgh Review," by Mr. 
Crosse. M. Peisse, the learned French translator, has added to 
the articles, published by him under the name of " Fragmens 
de Philosophie," sundry important contributions of his own ; — an 
Introduction, an Appendix, and Notes. Of the last especially I 
have frequently availed myself. 

In reprinting these criticisms, I have made a few unimportant 
corrections ; and some not unimportant additions—in length at 
least, for the new extends to above a half of the old. At the 
same' time I was not averse from evincing, by the way, the 
punctual accuracy of certain statements, advanced in these crit- 
icisms, which had been variously and sometimes even vehemently 
assailed. In one instance, the counter criticism was indeed cf 
such a character, and came from such a quarter, that I could not 
in propriety let it pass without a full and formal refutation. 

In preparing an Appendix, supplementary of the previous dis- 
cussions relative to the English Universities, I insensibly involved 
myself in a complication of details, which, after a fruitless and 
wholly unexpected expenditure of time, I found that leisure, ar. 



Ti AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 

strength, and patience all failed me either to disentangle or to 
complete ; I was, therefore, in the end constrained to limit the 
consideration not only to Oxford exclusively, hut exclusively to 
the education afforded in its fundamental faculty, that of Arts. 
And in reference even to this, had I anticipated the amount of 
tedious toil which the mere collecting and verifying of the facts 
would cost, I might have been disposed to avoid what, though to 
me a real labor, is so disproportioned to any apparent result. 

Apart from the Appendices, the new matter, whether of text 
or notes, except where distinction was needless, is inclosed within 
square brackets. 

Edinburgh, March, 1852. 



«** The Addenda and Corrigenda at the end of the English edition are, in the 
American republication, inserted in their proper places in the text. 



CONTENTS. 



PAOB 

Introductory Essay ". ri 



PHILOSOPHY. 

I. On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned ; in Reference 

to Cousin's Infinito-Absolute ....... : 9 

(Oct. 1829.— Edinburgh Review, Vol. 1., No. xcix., pp. 194-221.) 

II. Philosophy of Perception 45 

(Oct. 1830.— Vol. lii., No. ciii., pp. 158-207.) 

III. Johnson's Translation of Tennemann's Manual of the 

History of Philosophy 103 

(Oct. 1832.— Vol. lvi., No. cxi., pp. 160-177.) 

IV. Logic. The recent English Treatises on that Science 120 

(April 1833.— Vol. lvi., No. cxv., pp. 194-238.) 

Y. Deaf and Dumb. History of their Instruction in Refer- 
ence to Dalgarno 174 

(July 1835.— Vol. Ixi., No. cxxiv., pp. 407-417.) 

VI. Idealism ; with Reference to the Scheme of Arthur 

Collier 185 

(April 1839.— Vol. Ixviii., No. cxxxviii., pp. 337-353.) 



CONTENTS. 



LITERATURE. 



FAQS 

i. epistolie obscurorum vlrorum j the national satire of 

Germany 202 

'March 1831.— Vol. liii., No. cv., pp. 180-210.) 



II. On tiie Revolutions of Medicine ; in Reference to Cul- 

len 238 

(July 1832.— Vol. lv., No. ex., pp. 461-479.) 



EDUCATION. 



I. On the Study of Mathematics, as an Exercise of Mind. 257 
(Jan. 1836.— Vol. lxii., No. exxvi., pp. 409^55. Note, Vol. 
Ixiii., No. exxvii., pp. 270-275.) 



II. On the Conditions of Classical Learning. With Rela- 
tion to the Defense of Classical Instruction, by Pro- 
fessor Pillans 325 

(Oct. 1836.— Vol. Ixiv., No. exxix., pp. 106-124.) 

III. On the Patronage and Superintendence of Universities 345 

(April 1834.— Vol. lix., No. cxix., pp. 196-227.) 

IV. On the State of the English Universities. With more 

especial Reference to Oxford 383 

(June 1831.— Vol. liii., No. cvi., pp. 384-427.) 



V. On the State of the English Untversitees. With more 

especial Reference to Oxford (Supplemental) 430 

(Dec. 1831.— Vol. liv., No. cviii., pp. 478-504.) 



t 



CONTENTS. i* 

PAQK 

VI. On the Right of Dissenters to Admission into the En- 
glish Universities 458 

(Oct. 1834.— Vol. Ik,, No. cxxi., pp. 202-230.) 

VII. On the Right of Dissenters to Admission into the En- 
glish Universities (Supplemental) 500 

(Jan. 1835.— vol. lx., No. cxxii., pp. 422-445.) 

VIII Cousin on German Schools -526 

(July 1833.— Vol. Ivii., No. cxvi., pp. 505-542.) 



I. APPENDIX, PHILOSOPHICAL. 

(A.) Conditions of the Thinkable Systematized; Alphabet of 

Human Thought 567 

(B.) Philosophical Testimonies to the Limitation of our Knowl- 
edge, from the Limitation of our Faculties 591 



II. APPENDIX, LOGICAL. 
(A.) Of Syllogism, its Kinds, Canons, Notations, etc 602 

'B.) On Affirmation and Negation— on Propositional Forms — 
on Breadth and Depth — on Syllogistic, and Syllogis- 
tic Notation ; 609 



III. APPENDIX, EDUCATIONAL. 

(A.) Academical Patronage and Regulations in Reference to 

the University of Edinburgh \ . ; 640 



■x CONTENTS. 

riu 

(B.) The Examination and Honors for a Degree in Arts, 
during Centuries established in the University of 
Louvain 663 

(C.) On a Reform of the English Universities; with especial 
Reference to Oxford, and limited to the Faculty of 
Arts 669 

Index 755 



Ik 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 



The remarkable passage, in which Pascal exhibits, in contrast, the 
greatness and the littleness of man, has received a striking illustration in 
the history of speculative philosophy. For, while it embraces some of 
the richest and profoundest truth ever given to the world, it abounds in 
the strangest absurdities. What Varro says upon this point is as true 
now as it was in his day : nihil tarn absurde did potest quod non dica- 
tur ah aliquis philosophorum. And yet some of the greatest names in 
history adorn its annals — Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Anselm, 
Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Leibnitz, Edwards, Kant, Vico, 
Schelling, Hegel, Reid, and though last, not least, Hamilton, universally 
acknowledged in Europe and in this country, as " the first philosophical 
critic of the age." x 

Philosophy, too, has often mingled with the highest forms of literature 
■ — nay, more — has penetrated into the life of whole nations, exalting, 
strengthening, and refining their character, by means of those august and 
beautiful thoughts — 

" Which wander through eternity. 

As an intellectual gymnasium it has proved of immense service to innu- 

1 Sir William Hamilton, Bart., is Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh. He is descended from a noble Scottish family, one of whom, 
it is said by De Quincey, drew sword at the celebrated battle of Drumclog. He was 
admired, even when a young man, for his extraordinary literary attainments. Hia 
friends called him the Walking Encyclopedia. De Quincey, a competent judge, pro- 
nounces this impression correct, and says, that not in the region of metaphysics alone, 
but in almost all other departments of knowledge, he was, even then, thoroughly read. 
His manners are simple and dignified ; his whole character that of a great and a good 
man. Though rejecting ontological speculation in the domain both of philosophy and 
theology, he cherishes evidently the deepest veneration for the great truths not only 
of "natural religion," but of Christianity. He possesses a thorough contempt for the 
irreligious pantheism of the German philosophy, and especially for the mythic theory 
of Strauss and Bauer. No one, however, can become familiar with his writings with- 
out being impressed with his extraordinary candor, as well as his complete mastery of 
the entire field of philosophical speculation. His candor is not simply a moral qual- 
ity, but the natural accompaniment of knowledge and power. 



$ii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

merablc minds, in the way of discipline. 1 It is well known, also, that it 
lies at the basis of all theological science worthy of the name, giving 
strength and massive grandeur to the systems of Athanas"ius, Augustine, 
Anselm, and Calvin. Sometimes perverting the simplicity of Christian 
faith, it has often come to its rescue, and beaten back the hosts of infi- 
delity and error. If through philosophy the Germans have been se- 
duced from evangelical truth, by philosophy they are returning to it. 3 
Thought encounters thought, speculation wages war with speculation, 
till at last truth emerges from the strife, vigorous and triumphant. 
Error, indeed, is often long-lived, but it is not immortal. It may re-ap- 
pear in different ages, but it must die out at last. On the other hand, 
truth, which has its essence in the Divine mind, as well as in the course 
and constitution of nature, is imperishable. 

" The eternal years of God are hers." 
On which ground we vindicate the amplest and freest discussion in the 
domain both of religion and philosophy. 

It must be allowed, however, that the aberrations of speculative in- 
quiry, thus far, form the larger portion of its history. Sir William Ham- 
ilton, with all his enthusiasm for philosophical research, is compelled to 
say, "that the past history of philosophy has, in a great measure, been 
only a history of variation and error." 3 

For this there must exist some great underlying cause. Is it in the 
nature of the subject, or in the mode of its investigation, or in both ? 
We should reply, in both ; for the subject is one of extreme tenuity and 
difficulty, and the mode in which it has been investigated exceedingly 
variant, and empirical. It embraces, in its higher relations, a vast and 
all but illimitable range of inquiry, although, at first sight, it may seem to 
lie within a narrow compass, and on the very surface of the soul. But 
it calls up at the outset the great questions pertaining to the foundations 
of our knowledge, with the possibility of scientific, or what some call, ab- 
solute truth, the limits of the human intellect, the reality of the distinc- 
tion between subject and object, the world without and the world within ; 
and at a higher point of inquiry, the relations of the finite to the infinite, 
the mind of man to the mind of God. 

1 For proof of this see the papers in this volume on University Reform, the Study 
of Mathematics, &c., most of which, though written for specific occasions, contain 
much interesting information on this and kindred topics. 

2 The philosophy of Jacobi, eminently spiritual and favorable to Christianity, has 
exerted great influence in the restoration of the German mind to better views. The 
movement commenced by Schlciermacher, whose last words were. " In this faith I 
die," has been advanced by the labors of Neander, Tholuck, Nitzsch, Mullcr, and oth- 
ers. The theory of Strauss, based upon the Hegelian philosophy, is even now effete 
in Germany. The French philosophy, at one time sunk in sensualism, has been 
emancipated by the labors of Cousin, JoulTroy, Damiron, and others. In this respect 
j, great and happy change has been effected. 

3 Reid's Collected Works, vol. i Note A. p. 747. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xiii 

The main source of aberration would thus seem to lie in the finite or 
conditioned nature of man himself, his necessary imperfection of knowl- 
edge and experience, and the extreme difficulty which he finds in abstract- 
ing himself from himself, or from the world of material and evanishing 
forms. In philosophy he is first to make himself the object of contem- 
plation, and so realize within his own sphere the two poles of subject and 
object, and thus analyze and disintegrate from himself all the elements of 
his inner life. Here, even when possessed of extraordinary penetration, 
patience, and analytic power, with a legitimate method of inquiry, he is 
almost sure to lose his way, or become bewildered by the singularly deli- 
cate, complicated, and ever-changing trains of thought and feeling. It is 
like trying to catch the changeable Proteus on the sea-shore, and extort 
from him the secrets of truth. Composed of diverse elements, a body and 
a soul, and thus linked mysteriously to two separate yet corresponding 
worlds, the world of matter and the world of mind, lying, so to speak, in 
the bosom of the infinite, with no capacity, except in the way of contra- 
diction, to form a conception of absolutely limited or unlimited time, float- 
ing like a star in the immensity of space, between the transient and the 
eternal, the inquirer can scarcely tell how much he owes to the one, and 
how much to the other. He finds it difficult, at the very commencement; 
of his inquiries, to ascertain how much he can know of either ; nay, he 
perhaps finds it impossible to ascertain whether he can know any thing 
in a scientific or fundamental way. The world of phenomena lies before 
him obvious enough, and these, in their wide and beautiful classifications, 
are ranged as formal systems, which men call scientific ; but he wants to 
get beyond them into the real and immutable cause or causes of things, 
Especially he longs to penetrate beneath the surface of his own soul, and 
ascertain the real nature, origin, and authority of human thought. Can- 
' sciousness seems to be his only sphere of knowledge in this matter, and 
there he finds every thing given apparently under a limit and a relation, 
which he longs constantly to transcend, and transcending which, he does 
not know whether he has found phantoms or realities. And even when 
he feels that he has ascertained some truths satisfactorily, he must con- 
clude that there is yet " an infinity of knowledge beyond his reach." The 
more he knows, as Socrates, Pascal, and other great thinkers confess, the 
more deeply he feels his ignorance, not only in reference to nature but to 
himself." x 

Here emerges, then, the great cause of aberration in speculative phi- 
losophy. Its very nature and limits have not been adequately defined. 
From Thales to Kant, and from Kant to Sir William Hamilton, different 
methods of inquiry have been followed ; so that at the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, the question of method is yet in discussion, and we are 

1 See upon this point the citations in the " Discussions." — P. 601, et seq. 



X iv INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

not in possession, as all the philosophers acknowledge, of a complete sys- 
tem of psychology, to say nothing of. ontology, or the philosophy of the 
absolute. 1 

What can we know ? Is consciousness an adequate and supreme au- 
thority in all speculative science? Are subject and object, the Ego and 
the Non Ego essentially different ? If so, what are their true connections ? 
Does the one mirror the other ? Is every thing known under relation or 
limit ; and is the cognizable to be determined by this fact ? Are there 
great underlying principles, or mental data, which must be received by 
faith, or, which is the same thing, by reason as the faculty of intuitions, 
on their own simple authority ; and are these the basis and touchstone of 
all truth ? Can the finite transcend itself by means of reason? Can we 
deduce the absolute from the relative, the substance from its phenomena? 
Or, if this be impossible, can we discover, by an inward revelation (Offen- 
barw/g) or intuition (Anschaming 2 ), the ground-elements of all science ; 
and thus, without deduction, grasp the real, the spiritual, and eternal? 
Or if this be denied, must we confine ourselves to the manifested and 
phenomenal, and acknowledge, that the infinite and eternal Cause be- 
yond, though recognized as an ineffable reality, must remain unknown 
and incomprehensible ? Is knowledge thus preservative or representative, 
mediate or immediate ; or is it both ? Do the reason and the understand- 
ing differ, so that the one is occupied with infallible convictions, the other 
with mere framework and form ? Is all reason based upon failh (we 
mean philosophical, not theological faith), or is faith based upon reason? 
Must we know to believe, or believe to know? In a word, What is the 
nature, the genesis, and the limits of human knowledge? 

These are high and thrilling questions,~interesting to all who are capa- 
ble, even in the slightest degree, of introspection and reflection, and espe- 
cially to those upon whom God has bestowed the gift of profound and 
original thought. In all ages they have engaged, more or less, the atten- 
tion of those great reflective souls, who have longed to realize the ancient 
philosophical adage of yvuydt asavrov. 

1 No want is so deeply felt by thinkers as a complete psychology, which must form 
the basis of all higher speculation. Let any one read carefully Sir W. Hamilton's 
"Supplementary Dissertations," that particularly on "Common Sense" (Reid"s Col- 
lected Works, vol. i. p. 742), and he will be satisfied that this subject has to be in- 
vestigated afresh, and reconstructed upon a firm and permanent basis. We have in 
Reid, Stewart, Cousin, and others, lists of the fundamental axioms of human thought; 
but they arc all inadequate, and need revision. These works are only partial prepar- 
ations for a true science of mind. The labors of the Germans have been chiefly in the 
field of the absolute. The popular treatises which go under the name of psychologies, 
are mere fragments or compilations. Hickok's Rational Psychology is too rational- 
istic to be psychological at all. It is based upon the German notions of ontological 
or absolute science, and though indicating extensive research and considerable vigor 
of mind, fails to solve the problems suggested at the very outset of a true psycholo- 
gical inquiry. 

a Both of these terms are used by Jacobi. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY xv 

It might be inferred, however, from the very nature of man, determining 
the character and scope of his thought, which seems to hover midway 
between the material and the immaterial, the finite and the infinite, that 
the aberrations of speculative philosophy would be likely to take specific 
directions, as one or other extreme should prevail. From its limitation, 
as conditioned by the finite mind, thought would be liable, in the sphere 
of philosophy, to fall into idealism on the one hand, or materialism on the 
other ; or if overleaping its apparent boundaries, it would plunge now 
into absolute pantheism, and anon into universal skepticism. These are 
the actual extremes between which the pendulum of speculative thought 
has been found to swing, apparently resting at intervals in the centre, and 
then inclining now to this, and now to that outermost limit. That phi- 
losophy should remain in either of these extremes is impossible, so that 
until it find its true and immutable rest in the realty of things, variation 
will continue to be its law. 

But we propose to verify these general statements by a rapid survey of 
the progress of speculative thought from the earliest to the present times. 
This will aid us to appreciate the vast importance of a right method of 
philosophizing, as it will set before us the present condition of the science, 
and the peculiar position occupied by Sir William Hamilton, whose con- 
tributions to philosophy and logic, though occasional and fragmentary, are 
of a character so profound and fundamental, as to form an era in the his- 
tory of mental science. No one can be said to be familiar with the pres- 
ent condition and future prospects of philosophy who has not mastered 
these remarkable criticisms and discussions. 1 

Our survey, of course, must be a mere outline, making no pretensions to 
completeness, but touching simply such points as may serve to bring out, 
in more articulate form, the general and somewhat imperfect statement 
already made respecting the nature and sources of philosophical error, 
falling as it does, now on this side, and now on that of what seems to be 
real and immutable truth, and thus giving rise to idealism and pantheism 
on the one hand, or to materialism and atheism on the other. 

The history of Philosophy may be divided into four periods — The Ori- 
ental; the Greek; the Mediceval ; the Modem. These we shall con- 
sider in their order. 

1. If we ascend to the dawn of speculation among the Oriental philo- 

1 We include those appended to his edition of the Collected Writings of Reid 
(Edinburgh, 1846) as also his various criticisms scattered through the body of that 
work; for while defending Reid's fundamental position, in opposition to Hume and 
the skeptical school, he has corrected his mistakes, and given occasionally clearer and 
fuller analyses of the fundamental elements of the human mind. On the subject of 
Logic, of which we have no room to speak, he has defended its validity, and simpli- 
fied its forms. For information upon this subject see "Discussions." p. 116, et seq. 
p. 614, et seq.; Blakey's History of Logic, and Mr. Spencer Baynes's Essav on the 
"New Analytic of Logical Forms." 



xvi INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

Sophies, or rather theosophies, vast and shadowy, like the countries 
which gave them birth, we shall discover the two prevalent tendencies 
referred to ; though the current of Oriental thought has always inclined 
rather to idealism than to materialism. Both of these, however, are real- 
ized among the Brahminical sages, and are occasionally found existing in 
a blended form, giving rise to a confused, sensual pantheism. It was long, 
however, before philosophy disentangled itself, in any degree, from religion, 
so that we find, lying at the basis of all the speculations of the Hindoo 
mind, a complicated system of mythological worship, in which a few tra 
ditionary fragments respecting God and the soul are probably mingled 
with the veneration of nature or the universe. For this reason their 
religion is more a worship of the outward and carnal, than of the in- 
ward and divine. Still the world is regarded as a whole, and worshiped, 
in its various elements and forms, as a manifestation of the one indivisi- 
ble, eternal Brahm, or absolute Being. The moment, however, that 
speculative thought took a decisive form, it vacillated constantly between 
the real and the ideal, the inner and the outer worlds. Cousin states de- 
cisively that the first fruit of their philosophy, the moment it became in- 
dependent of the Vedas, or sacred books, was atheism. 1 This system, 
which goes far back into the annals of India, was called Sankhya, the 
author of which was Kapila, a sort of Hindoo Condillac. According to 
Kapila all thought is derived from sensation ; consequently there is nothing 
but matter. Synchronous with this but diverging from it, was the phi- 
losophy of Pantandjali, which as the other made nothing of God made 
every thing of God, but how is not so clearly explained. 2 Opposed to the 
narrow and atheistic philosophy of Kapila was the theory of rationalism, 
called Nyaya, which is found to be nothing less than a system of subject- 
ive idealism. As in Fichte's philosophy, the soul is the centre of this phi- 
losophy, and is infinite in its„principle. True, it is admitted to be a 
special substance, distinct from the body, and different in different indi- 
viduals ; so that this form of idealism was not consistently carried out. 
But this was subsequently done in the philosophy called Vedanta, which 
denied the existence as finite realities of both matter and mind, and 
recognized one universal Substance, as nature and God. The final abso- 
lute verity according to Karika, a celebrated commentator on the San- 
khya was this : 

" I neither am, nor is aught mine, nor do I exist." 

1 Hist, de la Philosophie. Second Series. Tome ii. p. 120. See also Tennemann's 
Manual, p. 41. 

2 There is much uncertainty respecting the forms of the Hindoo philosophy. Some, 
among whom is Hitter, doubt whether it ought to be dignified with the name of phi- 
losophy at all. Hegel in his Geschichte der Philosophic, says that their philosophy 
is " identical with their religion," and that its " fundamental idea is this, that there is 
one Universal Substance from which all things proceed, gods, animals, inorganic 
nature, and man." 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xvii 

Thus pantheism, in its most decisive form, was made the basis not 
only of Hindoo philosophy but of Hindoo worship. All things come from 
Brahm and thither all return. Mind is matter, and matter is mind, and 
all is God J Hegel is much pleased with the pantheistic philosophy of 
India, and quotes with approbation the Bhagavad Gita, in which the god 
Krishnu, an incarnation of Vishnu and thence of Brahm, is introduced 
addressing the warrior Ardjouna : " I am the author and destroyer of the 
universe, etc. I am the breath which dwells in the body of the living, 
the progenitor and the governor. * * * * I am the beginning, the middle, 
and the end of all things. I am under the stars the radiant sun, under 
the lunar signs the moon, the sweet perfume of the earth, the splendor 
of the flame, the life in animals," &c. 2 

Hence the key for the deliverance of the soul, according to the school 
of Vedantam, is in these words, which the Hindoo sages have to repeat 
incessantly, Aham, Ava, param Brahma, I am the supreme God — the 
last result of a fanatical pantheism. 3 

Tholuck in his interesting work on the pantheistic philosophy of the 
Persians (Ssufismus) informs us that the Mohammedan heretical philoso- 
phers, the Soofies, teach that God is every thing, in the most absolute sense 
of the expression, nihil esse 'prater Deum, that the external universe 
is a divine emanation, and that absorption in the primal essence is the 
highest good. In a word, their doctrine is that of a sublime, inexor- 
able pantheism, in which all distinction between subject and object, being 
and thought, holiness and sin, God and man is swallowed up and lost. 
The Budhists of India, an offshoot from Brahminism, materialize all 
things, consequently deny an eternal God, and long for Btcrchan, which 
is simply annihilation. Thus the Oriental soul vibrates darkly between 
pantheism and atheism, longing for, but apparently never finding, the 
" Unknown God." 

2. It was in Greece, however, that ancient speculative thought devel- 
oped itself with the greatest vigor. Somewhat under the influence of 
the Oriental mind, but acute, restless, penetrating, practical, and pressing 
philosophy, as all else, to its extreme logical verge, the Grecian thinkers 

1 See Cousin's Hist, de la Philosophic Second Series. Tome ii. Sixieme Lecon. 
Tennemann's Manual (Bonn's Ed.) pp. 37, 38. Compare Ritter's Ancient Philosophy, 
vol. i. pp. 60-128. For more extended information consult Colebrooke's Essay, and 
Miscellanies. Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, vols. i. and ii. 

2 See Geschichte der Philosophie, Schriften, T. 13, p. 152, et seq. Hegel is espe- 
cially pleased with the Sankhya, and imagines that he sees in this his own funda- 
mental principle, especially the three momenta or qualities of " The Absolute Idea," 
p. 154. It is well known that, in the Hindoo Cosmogony, Brahm, the absolute and in- 
conceivable becomes manifest in Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, who represent the creat- 
ing, preserving, and destroying powers of the Universe. These form a circle, in which 
all things proceed from and return into the absolute. This, therefore, in the form of 
theosophy, would represent the three Momenta, or Trinity of Hegel's Absolute Idea. 

3 Tholuck's Ssufismus, p. 214, quoted from Lettres Edifiantes. 

b 



xviii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

seized, with avidity, the great problems of existence, and projected an 
infinite variety of plausible and splendid theories. But "the boundless 
Power, the infinite Substance of the Orientals," as Hegel suggests, "was 
determined, limited, individualized by the Hellenic genius." In India, 
grand and colossal, the forces of nature are deified ; unity, immensity, 
eternity, are its leading ideas, absorption its longing and aim. Ou the 
other hand, the gods of Greece are "the offspring of passion and thought," 
and its philosophy that of the Kosmos, or visible universe, as limited, but 
complete, beautiful, harmonious. The outward and formal, indeed, is 
finally transcended, and the essence of philosophy is recognized in the 
absolute and ideal. But nature, with its grace, beauty, and movement, 
supplies the chief inspiration of the Greek mind, and the absolute or ideal 
is little more than an abstraction of material forms. 

Never in the annals of history did thought expatiate with more free- 
dom and energy ; and here, if anywhere, might philosophy have reached 
perfection and solved the enigma of the universe. But we find it con- 
stantly vacillating between subject and object, sensualism and idealism, 
atheism and pantheism, and finally, running out into a flat and arid 
skepticism. 

The earlier Greek philosophers are speculative naturalists, who attempt 
to solve the origin of the universe by a reference to natural or occult 
forces. The idea of a supreme and controlling mind seems to haunt 
them, but seldom comes out in clear and articulate form. Soon they 
range themselves under two determinate schools — the Ionian and the 
Eleatic ; the former, with some exceptions, teaching a system of natural- 
ism, or refined materialism, with occasional glimpses of an all-penetrating 
Mind or God ; the other, a system of idealism, which issues in a lofty but 
bewildering pantheism. 1 Thales, the founder of the Ionian school, derived 
all things from water, or moisture, as a generative principle, accompanied or 
followed, it is difficult to say which, by a sort of magnetic or mental en- 
ergy, pervading universal nature. 2 Anaximander advanced a step further, 
and maintained that all things, or the material universe in its totality, is the 
only God. Anaximanes, and somewhat later Diogenes of Apollonia, asserted 
that air and not water is the true source of all existence ; while Hera- 
clitus of Ephcsus, oracular and profound, found it in the more delicate 
and resplendent element of fire. Perhaps, as Bitter suggests, he used the 
term fire in a figurative sense, and really believed, as he seems to teach, 

1 The Ionian school varies exceedingly, as Ritter (Hist, of A. Ph. p. 201, ct seq.) 
has shown. We do not find any decided continuity in their views. 

2 Thales seems to have regarded the Kosmos as a sort of animal, having a vital, or 
6eminal principle, by which it is nourished. He has been represented, on the author- 
ity of Cicero, who mistook the testimony of Aristotle, as a sublime Theist. If he 
believed in God, he made water and God primary essences. In his view, all things 
are " ensouled." Amber and the magnet, for example, he represents as possessing 
11 souls/' His term for soul is 'tyvxi- — Aristotle, De Animo, i. 2. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xut 

that the all-creative, all-penetrating power is infinite and eternal Reason. 
Judging from the spirit and scope of his speculations, he belongs rather 
to the school of Elea than to that of Ionia. His Eternal Fire produces 
and absorbs all individual phenomena. "All is and is not." "On the 
same stream we embark, and we embark not ; we are, and we are not." 
"Life is death, and death is life." "All is contrary, and yet all is har- 
mony." A doctrine which must have been posited in the idea of abso- 
lute and eternal unity. To him the universe is "ensouled" and divine; 
in a word, pantheism, as in the school of Elea, is the logical result of his 
system. Whence the force of his favorite apothegm, "Enter; for here, 
too, are gods." 1 

It may be naturally supposed, that according to the views of most of 
the Ionian philosophers, the soul of man is either a natural energy, or a 
mere mechanical force, somewhat refined ; consequently fatalism is its 
logical issue. 

From this source sprang the atomic theory of Leucippus and Democri- 
tus, according to which the universe, internal and external, is composed 
of definite atoms. The soul is a collection of such atoms, igneous, and 
spherical, producing at once motion and thought. The theory was in- 
genious, and admitted, in its elucidation and defense, of much eloquent 
discussion, but could never transcend the forms of matter, or lift the soul 
to the idea of supreme and eternal perfection. 

Xenophanes, a rhapsodist, as well as philosopher, is usually recognized 
as the founder of the Eleatic school, and certainly attained, at least by 
glimpses, to lofty views of God and the universe; but he found himself 
bewildered by the problem of the One and the All, the All and the One 
Thus he says, mournfully : 

" Certainly no mortal yet knew, and ne'er shall there be one 
Knowing well both the gods and the All, whose nature we treat of: 
For when, by chance, he at times may utter the true and the perfect, 
He wists not unconscious ; for error is spread over all things." 2 

Between the Ionian school, with its world of natural forces, and the 
Eleatic with its abstract or ideal one, we find the Italian school founded 
by Pythagoras, who, with a profounder insight than most of his contem- 
poraries, penetrated beneath mere phenomena, and tried to solve the in- 
terior relations of things. His mind, like that of Spinoza, in more modern 
times, was eminently mathematical, and so he constituted the universe 

1 Ritter, Hist, of Anc. Phil. i. 255. 

2 Hence the appropriateness of the words put into his mouth by Timon, the 
Sinograph : 

" that mine were the deep mind, prudent and looking to both sides ; 
Long, alas ! have I strayed on the road of error, beguiled, 
And am now hoary of years, yet exposed to doubt and distraction 
Of all kinds ; for wherever I turn to consider 
I am lost in the One and All." 



xx INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

of numbers, and recognized the Deity as a simple numerical unit, from 
which the universe is evolved. "The Ionians," says Hegel, "conceived 
the absolute under a natural form ; instead of this, the Pythagoreans sub- 
stituted Number, -which is neither a material thing, nor pure thought, 
but something between them, which partakes of the nature of both." 
Chaos is organized by numbers, and the universe is both one and many. 
• The Eleatic school was formed under Pythagorean influence. Unity 
was its central principle, and diversity, or plurality, was gradually elim- 
inated. It was finally abandoned by Zeno, who denied the innate energy, 
and the consequent real existence of the external world. Parmenides 
maintained that thought is one with its object, one with actual existence, 
and thus approached the absolute idealism of the modern German school. 

In this way the schools of Ionia and Elea represented the two extremes 
of philosophical speculation, and combated each other with various suc- 
cess, the consequence of which was the rise of many Skeptics who despised 
them both, and a very few Eclectics who attempted, but without decided 
success, to blend the peculiarities of the two systems. 1 

At last Socrates made his appearance, the noblest and purest of all 
the Greek philosophers, the friend and teacher of Alcibiades, Xenophon, 
and Plato, who, like Reid in Scotland, recalled his countrymen to the 
reality of things and the dictates of common sense, and thus created an 
epoch in the history, of thought. It was not, however, in precisely the 
same import of the expression, as that attached to it by Dr. Reid. and 
explained by Sir "W. Hamilton, that Socrates appealed to the dictates of 
" common sense." He made no attempt, on philosophical grounds, to 
ascertain the fundamental axioms of thought, or to construct a psycho- 
logical system. He called attention only to common convictions, con- 
ceded principles, obvious every-day uses ; exhorted men to study them- 
selves, and not cheat their minds by prejudices and appearances, and 
especially by an unmeaning logomachy. His method, if he had any, was 
that of clear definitions, admirable within certain limits, but liable to 
great abuse. He poured contempt upon the shallow pretensions of the 
popular teachers, and endeavored to turn the minds of men in upon them- 
selves. " Know thyself," was his great maxim, goodness his end and 
aim. He had no theory, properly speaking, wrote no book, founded no 
school. He followed common sense, "the good demon," as he symbolized 
it — the inspiration of the Almighty, we should say, "the light which 
lighteth every man," who will heed it; in other words, the deep spon- 
taneous convictions of the well-ordered soul, which evermore suggest the 
reality of a Supreme Being, the beauty and authority of virtue. Man 

1 When we speak of the school of Ionia, it is rather in deference to usage, for we 
have already seen that one of the number was rather an idealist than a materialist. 
Indeed there is so much diversity among them, that its members alone might be taken 
as representatives of the two extremes of philosophical speculation. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxi 

comes from God, as he is made for God, and he has only to open his eyes 
to see him, and his heart to feel him. " He is not far from any one of 
us ; seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things ; for in him 
we live, and move, and have our being." But the instant man begins to 
speculate on the absolute, as if he could comprehend it in its essence, he 
falls into error and doubt the most bewildering and fatal. By a kind of 
sacred intuition, Socrates seemed to understand this ; and his glory con- 
sists in following that intuition to its legitimate, practical results. That 
he had better views of the Divine nature and government of the universe 
than the most of his contemporaries, can not be questioned ; but he was 
wise enough not only to know, but to acknowledge his ignorance, as he 
playfully suggests when accounting for the decision of the oracle of Apollo, 
which pronounced him the wisest of men. 

Properly speaking, Socrates was a moralist, rather than a metaphysi- 
cian, and longed, as intimated in the Platonic dialogues, for some higher 
light than reason alone could furnish. His death, one of the most sublime 
in the history of ancient times, crowned his life with imperishable honor, 
and produced a deeper conviction than all the speculations of the schools, 
of the spirituality and immortality of man. 

Notwithstanding the beauty of his life and the excellence of his max- 
ims, it is singular that under the eyes of Socrates, and as one of the im- 
mediate results of the speculative spirit then rife among the Greeks, 
sprang two schools, the Cynic and the Cyrenaic, the one resulting in a 
fanatical rigor, the other in gross licentiousness. Skepticism was defend- 
ed by the Socratic dialectics under Euclid of Megara. 

But Grecian philosophy culminated in Plato and Aristotle, the first to 
present speculative thought in a truly scientific form. Apparently diverg- 
ing at the outset, we find these great thinkers coming together in the 
higher sphere of speculation, and constituting the universe of absolute 
thought. 1 The temperaments of the two men are different, but the re- 
sults to which they arrive are very much alike. Both transcend all out- 
ward forms, whether of nature or the finite intellect, and expatiate in the 
boundless regions of unconditioned being. Aristotle seems empirical, but 
in reality is pre-eminently rationalistic ; for while he rejects Plato's ideas 
as actual entities, and maintains their simple subjective character, he is 
not quite consistent with himself, and in the end constitutes the universe 

1 No man has been more completely misrepresented in modern times by the cur 
rent writers on the subject, than Aristotle. He is constantly charged with empiri 
cism, and in this respect unfavorably contrasted with Plato. Whereas he was Plato's 
proper successor, in the development of metaphysical science. Less eloquent and 
more logical, he stands much in the same relation to Plato, that Hegel does to Schel- 
ling. He uniformly begins with experience, perhaps never entirely loses sight of it. 
Still he is as speculative, as Plato, even while he criticises him. But as he takes 
every opportunity of criticising his master, it has been inferred that his philosophy 
is entirely different. 



xxii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

of thought, and so becomes, in a different direction, as ideal as Plato. 1 
The two men possess different temperaments and different styles both of 
thought and composition ; for while Aristotle with his peculiarly clear 
and methodical mind, constructs his vast edifice, according to architect- 
ural rules, to borrow the figure of Goethe, Plato, mystical and imagina- 
tive, ascends to heaven in a pyramid of flame. Yet Aristotle, while 
laying his foundations on the earth, advances in the same direction, and 
according to Hegel, transcends his master in the conception of the absolute 
idea. 2 By far the most learned man of his age, both in the departments 
of speculative and experimental science, more learned even than Plato, 
with whom he studied twenty years, the author of the syllogism, and the 
father of natural history, this illustrious thinker made a near approach to 
the methods of Bacon and Newton. But enamored of speculation, Aris- 
totle finally identified being and thought, indulged in the most subtle 
speculation on entities and quiddities, and fell into a notion respecting the 
primal Essence, first as absolute or unknown, then as active and real- 
ized, making God (rather to delov the divine, to aireipov the infinite), 
the mere thought of the universe, organized in matter, and coming to 
consciousness in man, a system akin to that of Hegel, and giving birth, 
in its last result, to a profound religious indifference. 

Plato, dialectical, yet imaginative, does not deny the facts of the ex- 
ternal world any more than the facts of consciousness. He starts from 
these, but speedily transcends them. His system is ideal and sublime. 
He derives all things from ideas, which he regards not merely as names 
or abstractions, but as actual entities, having a necessaiy and eternal ex- 
istence. To him existence and ideas are identical, the process of thought 
is the process of the Universe. Having gained this height, and beholding 
all things in the absolute, Plato proceeds to construe the real world by 
means of archetypal ideas. He naturally despises the outward and 
phenomenal, and while recognizing the Supreme Cause, as an infinite 
Essence, he makes him so absolute — in other words, so abstract and ideal 
— as to divest him of all personality. 3 The primal Idea or Essence, in which 
are included all other ideas, thus transcends all our approaches of thought, 
above all, of affection and worship. The reason or soul of man is a part 
or emanation of the Universal Reason, and finds its highest aim in min- 
gling with its perfect ideal and source. It is fallen from its primitive 
state, for it existed in the past eternity ; whence the doctrine of innate 
ideas, or of reminiscence — as Plato called it — through which it must once 
more re-ascend to its fountain, by abstraction from the outward and tran- 

1 For proof of this see the 12th chapter of his " Metaphvsica." Compare Ritter, 
Hist, of Phil. iii. pp. 176-178. 

3 See Geschichte der Philosophie. (Schriften, T. xiv.) pp. 298-301. 

3 Plato's god of the Universe (Kosmos) is very different from the Supreme Idea, or 
Reason, for he represents it as created by the Supreme Reason. See the close of the 
Timseus. Compare Tim»us, cxiv. ; Phaedrus, 55. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxiii 

sient world. 1 The Supreme Reason organized chaos (Hyle, a sort of re- 
fined basis of matter, eternal as God) into order and beauty. But as there 
is nothing beautiful but intelligence, and no intelligence without a soul, 
he placed a soul in the body of the world (Kosmos), and represented it as 
a living, conscious existence. Being an animal, having a soul as well as 
a body, it resembles its Creator, as human beings resemble the Kosmos, 
or, to nav faov, the universal animal ! This was the work of the Su- 
preme Reason ; so that the instant this vast animal began to live, think, 
and move, God looked upon it and was glad. 2 

Plato combines, apparently, the peculiarities of the Oriental and Grecian 
minds ; and his system is not without its inconsistencies and contradic- 
tions. Unity, however, is its central idea ; abstraction and idealization 
its methods. He is dialectical and mystical, logical and poetical, by turns. 

** But evermore he soars upward and onward toward the true, the beauti- 
ful, and the good, in their perfect and eternal archetypes. The soul, 
though fallen into matter and sin, has a reminiscence of its sublime ori- 

*gin, and renouncing the senses, ascends to purity and God. 3 If Plato's 
metaphysical views are developed in the Parmenides, as his theosophic 
and cosmological are in the Timceus, then Hegel is probably right, when he 
maintains that Plato conceived God, or the Absolute, as " the identity of 
the identical and the non-identical," in which all real and permanent dis- 
tinction between subject and object, finite and infinite, is lost, and nothing 
is left but relation and " becoming." The universe lies between two 
zeros, or abstractions, being and non-being; so that, as Plato teaches, "if 
the One exist it is nothing," and yet " it is every thing," that is, nothing 
in itself as absolute, but every thing and all, as realized and concrete. 4 

But without entering into this obscure and disputed matter, we may be 
permitted to say that idealism is the true genius of the Platonic philoso- 
phy. God geometrizes the universe by ideas and relations. From the 
one abstract fountain, all existence — sun, stars, worlds, gods, animals, 
and men — flow into outward, phenomenal existence. It is but a step 
to say that the external world is only an appearance, a beautiful but be- 
wildering masquerade ; or, as Emerson has expressed it, that " God is the 

* only substance, and his method illusion." Plato scarcely says so : but he 
supplies the premises from which others deduce the appalling error. An 
ideal pantheism is the logical consequence of the Platonic philosophy. 

From Plato and Aristotle, then, we see the Platonic and Peripatetic 
schools inclining to the opposite extremes of abstract rationalism and 

1 For the doctrine of reminiscence, see the Phsedo, 47, 48, 49 ; Phsedrus, 61, 62 
See also Timaeus, clxxii. 2 Timasus, cxiv. 

3 See the beautiful mythic hymn, as Socrates calls it, in which the fall and subse- 
quent re-ascension of the soul is figured. Phaedrus, 55, 56, et seq. 

4 See the Parmenides, passim, which seems to be a discussion on the relations of 
being and non-being, or, as it were, the relations between yes and no, something and 
nothing. 



xxiv INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

blank materialism. 1 Epicurus, who founded a school of his own, which 
nearly absorbed all the rest, represents sensualism ; so that throughout 
Greece, all faith in the supernatural began to be lost. At last, about the 
time of Christ, the two prevalent forms of philosophy were, the stern doc- 
trine of the Stoics, founded on the idea of pantheism and inexorable fate , 
and a system of Epicurean indifference, which resolved all virtue into 
a calculation of prudence, or a wise pursuit of pleasure. 

The same views reappeared among the Romans, with some revival in 
Cicero and ethers, of the Platonic spirit. It had lost, however, its genius 
and inspiration, and claimed attention only as a system of academic 
doubt. 2 Indeed a secret skepticism was the terrible shadow which accom 
panied all ancient speculation, and seemed eventually to take possession 
of the entire Greek and Roman minds. The Elder Pliny, who was willing 
to perish at Vesuvius, gives it mournful utterance in the following words. 
"All religion is the offspring of necessity, weakness, and fear. What God 
is, if in truth he be any thing distinct from the world, it is beyond the 
compass of the human understanding to know. But it is a foolish delusion, 
which has sprung from human weakness and pride, to imagine that such 
an infinite spirit would concern himself about the petty affairs of man. It 
is difficult to say, whether it might not be better for men to be wholly 
without religion, than to have one of this kind, which is a reproach to its 
object. The vanity of man and his insatiable longing after existence, 
have led him also to dream of a life after death. A being full of contra- 
dictions, he is the most wretched of creatures ; since the other creatures 
have no wants transcending the bounds of their nature. Man is full of 
desires and wants, that reach to infinity, and can never be satisfied. His 
nature is a lie — uniting the greatest poverty with the greatest pride. 
Among these so great evils the best thing God has bestowed upon man is 
the power of taking his own life !" 

The " nature" of man, however, must be met ; and skepticism can never 
satisfy the cravings of the soul. Hence we find, subsequently to the Chris- 
tian era, a revival of the Platonic philosophy in Alexandria, mingled with 
some Oriental elements of theosophic mysticism. Gorgeous and imposing, 
appealing to the deepest wants of our nature, and promising the realiza- 
tion of our fondest hopes, in union with' infinite beatitude, JNTeo-Platonism 
now favored, and now opposed Christianity. Occasionally it was pro- 
foundly pious, as in Clement and Origen, and left an indelible impression 
on the new faith. It tended, however, to the absolute unity of all things. 
Its predominant element was pantheism. Both Plotinus and Proclus bor- 

1 The Peripatetics did not fully understand their master. His system seemed em- 
pirical, and opposed to the Platonic — which Aristotle constantly took every opportu- 
nity of criticising. It thence became, in effect, really empirical and materialistic. 

2 It is on this account we meet such singular inconsistencies in the philosophical 
writings of Cicero. For now he seems to believe in God and the immortality of the 
soul, and anon to doubt these fundamental truths. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. • xxv # 

rowed largely, not only from Plato, but from the Eastern Magi. Their 
philosophy had some grand and imposing features ; but it could not escape 
the vortex of the absolute, and went out in a paroxysm of mystic trans- 
cendentalism. 

The same remarks will apply to the system of the Gnostics, who aimed 
at absolute knowledge, first opposing, and then adopting Christianity, in 
a modified, or mutilated form. God according to their system is the abso- 
lute Being, from whom emanate all other beings, seons, gods and men in 
regular gradation and succession. Creation is represented, as in the Hin- 
doo philosophy, as an emanation, pure and resplendent at its first issue, 
but becoming grosser and darker at its extremities. 1 

This closes our review of the history of ancient philosophy ; and before 
proceeding to the consideration of the modern, including the mediaeval, 
we may be permitted to inquire, what is the net result ? Has the true 
method of philosophical investigation been found ? Has unity or con- 
sistency been attained ? Have the great truths of the soul, of God and 
immortality, and the relations between them been scientifically estab- 
lished ? Is man thoroughly known ? Is God plainly revealed ? If so, 
why all this variation and doubt, this " building up and tearing down" 
of theories, this strange and fatal bewilderment ? Do we not feel, at our 
inmost soul, that the very beginning of a reliable philosophy is yet to be 
sought ; and that its foundations must be laid, not in wild ontological con- 
jectures, which transcend the limits of the human mind, but in a true 
scientific investigation of the elementary facts of human consciousness ? A 
fine thing it is to be gods, soaring on wings of light, beyond the visible 
diurnal sphere, and reading the secrets of nature and of God, in the very 
centre of the absolute ; but alas ! we are compelled to confess ourselves 
plain mortals who by patient and legitimate inquiry, or by divine aid, 
must build up the pyramid of human science, with its summit bathed in 
light, and penetrating the encircling heavens. 

3. We do not find the mediaeval or the more recent philosophies com- 
pletely severed from the ancient systems, yet they have a character and 
a career of their own. The same questions, and the same modes of treat- 
ment reappear, but modified by new and powerful elements. Christianity 
especially has exercised an immense influence upon philosophical thought, 
now checking and now elevating its speculations, and above all giving it 
a more decisively moral and practical character. Still philosophical in- 
quiry has asserted its independence, and often lapsed into the old extremes, 
from which it would seem all but impossible to preserve it. The earlier 
Fathers of the Church, more practical than speculative, kept within narrow 
limits, contenting themselves with the divine authority of the new and 

1 Ritter, vol. iv. p. 545, et seq. Histoire Critique Du Gnosticisme, par M. J. Matter. 
Tome i. pp. 220, 339. For an abridged statement see same author, " Histoire Du 
Christianisme." Tome i. pp. 160-178. Neander, Church His't. vol i. p. 366, et seq. 



xxvi INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

wonderful revelation which had broken upon their minds. As soon, how- 
ever, as they began to philosophize with any freedom they lost themselves, 
in the theory of matter and spirit, and especially of emanation. Though 
professing a spiritual religion, they found it difficult to dispossess their minds 
of material notions and images. Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, 
Tertullian, Origen, and especially Arius, with their divergent doctrines on 
the divinity of the Logos, all fall into this error. Clement and Origen. 
from their position, are under Platonic influence, and rise into higher re- 
gions, but give too much play to the mere sensuous imagination. Athan- 
asius and somewhat later Augustine, especially the latter, are more spirit- 
ual, and distinguish clearly between matter and mind, finite and infinite 
existence. The necessity of defending the great truths of Christianity 
against all opposers naturally introduced a more logical and systematic 
method of reasoning ; and, in course of time, we find the speculative spirit 
becoming predominant in the Church. The reverence cherished for the 
Scriptures by the early doctors, who attempt to philosophize, prevented 
them from wandering too far in the labyrinths of speculation, but they fre- 
quently marred the simplicity of the truth by their subtile reasonings and 
fierce polemics. 1 In the middle ages the predominant philosophy was that 
of Aristotle, applied as a form or method to the dogmas of the Church. 
This produced an elaborate system of theological dialectics, controlled and 
limited by ecclesiastical authority. The schoolmen could not, therefore, 
well rush into the extremes of speculation, and yet how frequently is the 
God of their reason, a mere logical quiddity, or metaphysical abstraction. 
It must he acknowledged, however, that this era, limited as it was, in 
facilities and resources for philosophical study, was rich in all the elements 
of profound and vigorous thought. The few that speculated at all, did so 
with a patience and a grasp which ought to command the respect of all 
succeeding times. The very names of the teachers and theologians of the 
middle ages, suggest, even to those hut slightly acquainted with their liter 
ature, a feeling of veneration. " Scholasticos," says Leibnitz, " agnosco 
ahundare ineptiis ; sed aurum est in illo cceno." In truth there were 
giants in those days, though confined within narrow hounds, and beating 
with heavy tread the same circle of mystic speculation. Anselm of Can- 
terbury, a genius of the highest order, with the deepest reverence for the 
teachings of the Church, ranged the whole field of speculative thought, 
much in the imaginative spirit of Plato, mingled with the logical subtilty 
of Aristotle, and gave the process of " reason seeking the faith," and of 
"faith seeking the reason." His "Cur Deus Homo," is remarkable for 
the lofty and comprehensive range of its thought. He finds in the higher 
unity of absolute existence, which is God, and the necessity, as Plato and 

1 For an ample and critical account of " Christian Philosophy," see the 5th and 6th 
vols, of Ritter's " Geschichte der Alt. Philos." A French translation has appeared 
from the pen of Trullard. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxvii 

the Platonics abundantly teach, that such absolute Being should limit 
himself in his manifestation through the Logos, in order to his comprehensi- 
bility by the human mind. So that in the very essence of the Divine 
Nature, he discovers a basis for the doctrine of the incarnation. But he 
is not satisfied with vindicating the essential truth of Christianity alone; 
he must establish, on a firm foundation, the reality of natural religion. 
Finding the idea of absolute or infinite Being subsisting in the human 
mind, which is itself finite and limited, he infers that it could not have 
originated there. Its very possibility, on the principle of contradiction, as 
developed in the Aristotelian dialectics, above all its actual presence in the 
soul of man, proves its reality : the precise argument of Descartes and 
Leibnitz, the validity of which has been vehemently disputed to the pres- 
ent day. Anselm, great and good, is well entitled to the appellation, which 
he received in the. middle ages, of the Doctor Trancendentalis.^ Others 
followed him, some tending to idealism, others to sensationalism ; some 
holding to abstractions, others, as they supposed, to realities. Among these 
we have Peter Lombard, Magister Sententiarum Sapientum; Alexander 
Hales, Count of Gloucester, the Doctor Irrefragibilis, author of the Summa 
Universes Theologies ; and Thomas Aquinas, that high born Dominican 
monk, founder of the school of the Realists, called by his schoolmates at 
Cologne the Dumb Ox (perhaps from his early silence and strength), who 
fulfilled the prophecy of his master Albertus Magnus (Albert of Bollstadt) 
by " giving such a bellow of learning as was heard all over the world." 3 
He was a profound thinker and a pious man, being justly denominated by 
his contemporaries " the Angel of the Schools." He maintained the reality 
of those great productive and universal ideas (or truths), under which all 
phenomena, both as particulars and as species, are ranged ; and hence 
reasoned a priori, from substance to attributes, from causes to effects. 
Having spent a long life, in the study of that philosophy, in which ideas, 
as with Plato, took the form of archetypal entities, mingled with prayers 
and canticles, he died in peace at Terracina, in Italy, saying, "This is my 
rest for ages without end." Somewhat later we find John of Fidanza, com- 
monly called Bonaventura, the Doctor Seraphicus, who taught that religion 
is true philosophy, and rose, like Boehmen and Fenelon in subsequent 
times, to the sublimest heights of mystic fervor ; Henry de Gand, the 
Doctor Solemnis; Richard of Middletown the Doctor Solidus ; Giles of 
Cologne, the Doctor Fundatissimus ; Vincent de Beauvais, the teacher of 

1 Portions of Anselm's Works have been recently published. They are very curi- 
ous, as containing speculations and modes of expression similar to those of the Ger- 
man philosophers. Des Cartes, Leibnitz, and even Hegel, are anticipated in many 
things. 

2 The Realists maintained the reality of universal ideas, contending that they were 
more than names, as the Nominalists, their opponents, taught. They thus approached 
the Platonic view, and were actually the idealists of their time. The term Realists 
had a very different signification then from what it has now. 



•xviii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

St. Louis, and author of the Speculum Doctrinale, Naturale, Historiale; and 
ahove all John Duns Scotus, the Doctor Subtilis, that arid but penetrating 
Scotchman or rather Northumbrian, the great expounder of Nominalism, 
who affirmed with Aristotle that universal ideas arc only the names of ab- 
stract generalizations, under which all individual phenomena may be 
conveniently classified. He taught that the end of philosophy is to find out 
"the quiddity of things — that every thing has a kind of quiddity or quiddi- 
tive existence, and that nothingness is divided into absolute and relative 
nothingness, which has no existence out of the understanding." Belong- 
ing to the same era and climbing the same dizzy heights of philosophic 
speculation were Roger Bacon, the Doctor Mirabilis; Raymond Lully 
(Lulli), the Doctor IUuminatus, a fervid Spanish monk, who invented the 
logical system called Ars Universalis ; and John d'Occam, the Doctor 
Invincibilis, Singidaris et Venerabilh, that redoubtable Franciscan monk, 
who told Louis of Bavaria, " that if he would defend him with the sword, 
he would defend him with the pen." He studied under Duns Scotus, 
revived the discussions of his master, and taught with such success, that 
the Nominalists became victorious in a dispute, which, in the spirit of the 
times, often proceeded from words to blows. In addition to these, we 
ought not to forget those other philosophical or religious doctors who illu- 
mined the dark ages, as we call them, starred as those ages were with such 
brilliant lights ; Francis of Mayence, Magister Acutus Abstractiontim ; 
"William Durand, the Doctor Resolutissimtcs ; Walter Burleigh, the Doctor 
Plamis et Perspicuus, author of the first history of Mediaeval Philosophy ; 
and especially Gerson of Paris, Doctor Christiamssirnits, who, familiar 
with all the science and learning of the times, abandoned the whole for 
the knowledge of Christ, spent a life of great purity and devotion, vindi- 
cated communion with God as the only true philosophy, and wrote, there 
is reason to believe, " The Imitation of Christ" by Thomas a' Kempis. 1 

We can not enter into the speculations of these acute and learned doc- 
tors — suffice it to say that they anticipate, in forms more or less perfect, 
many of the ideas and discussions of more recent times. Descartes, 
Leibnitz and others, often echo their most peculiar opinions. The same 
speculative and often extravagant disputes on the nature and origin of 
ideas, the relations of the finite to the infinite, the quiddity or essence of 
matter and of mind, the nature of God, and the production of the universe, 
with much that is good and beautiful and true, run through the entire 
history of mediceval philosophy. The great truths of religion, modified 
by the notions of the times, were reduced, by means of the Aristotelian 

1 For a brief and elegant account of Mediaeval Philosophy see Cousin, Hist, de la 
Philosophie, Second Series, Tome ii. pp. 221, 257. See also the article "Abelard" 
in the "Fragmens Philosophiques." Also "Abelard" par M. C. Remusat. The 3d 
vol. Brucker's Critical History of Philosophy ; IVeander's " Church History," 3d and 
4th vols. Tennemann, Geschichte der Ph. Tom. viii., Manual p. 215, et seq. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xsix 

diaieclies, to the region of pure ideas, and set to fighting on scientific 
principles. One of the consequences was the prevalence, in the fifteenth 
century, within the Catholic church, of a heartless skepticism, making the 
reformation of the sixteenth a matter of absolute necessity. 

4. Previous to this, however, philosophy had begun to extricate itself 
from the trammels of ecclesiastical authority ; but it was to fall as usual 
into the extremes of atheism and pantheism. The revival in Italy of 
classical literature introduced Plato and the Greek philosophy. The in- 
fluence of Aristotle and the Schoolmen was abjured. Great enthusiasm 
prevailed, and the transition, though blind, impulsive, and irregular, was 
not without hope. But the most vigorous and independent thinkers, with 
slight exceptions, were either materialists or ideal pantheists. On the 
side of the naturalists, or materialists, we have Campanella, Vanini and 
others, with a strong tendency to atheism ; on that of the idealists, the- 
more generous and hopeful of the two, the two Picos de la Mirandola, 
Ramus, Patrizzi, Marsilio, Ficino, and Giordano Bruno. Bruno the most 
original and celebrated of these, and withal the martyr of the school, 
dashed into the boldest idealism. He maintained the absolute unity and 
identity of all things, and adored the All as the true and eternal God. 
The germ of Leibnitz's Monadology may be found in Bruno. Several of 
Spinosa's favorite terms as well as ideas, for example, his famous distinc- 
tion between the Natura Naturans and Natura Naturata, are found here. 
Schelling has entitled one of his works Bruno, and makes no secret of his 
admiration for his Italian prototype. Notwithstanding all his aberrations, 
Bruno, fickle, fervid, and absurd, was earnest and eloquent, sometimes 
even sublime. At the stake he welcomed death as a passage to a higher 
life, a transition from the finite to the infinite. More of a poet than a 
philosopher, with the genius and fire of his native clime, he strangely 
mingles the true and the false. His method is imagination, his reason- 
ing rhapsody. Hence he says himself, with marvelous simplicity, " Phi- 
losophi quoad modo pictores atque poetse ;" to which he adds, " Non est 
philosophus msvjingit el pingit /" ] 

Our readers are acquainted with the prodigious influence of the Reform- 
ation on the study of speculative philosophy. All authority, ecclesiastical 
and scientific, was called in question. Aristotle was dethroned. Simple 
and rational investigation of nature and the Bible, divine revelations both, 
was encouraged. This led to what has been called the Inductive Phi- 
losophy, by the simple methods of observation and reflection. Bacon called 
men away from vague theorizings to the study of nature and themselves. 
His method followed to its practical results by Newton, has been, de- 

1 He was born in the vicinity of Naples in 1550, and was publicly burned by order 
of the Inquisition at Rome, in 1600. For a complete account of his life and writings 
see Jordano Bruno, son Histoire et les GEuvres, trad, par M. C. Bartholomess. 
Paris 1847. 



xxx INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

nounced as mere classification; which, were it such, would prove it empirical 
enough. But while he directed attention less to the mental than to the 
material world, and laid more stress apparently upon induction than deduc- 
tion, he respects both, and uniformly proceeds upon the supposition of fun- 
damental convictions. Bacon's Organon recognizes the great idea of cause 
or power, and calls attention not only to phenomena but to principles. It 
recognizes spirit as well as matter, and gives us, at least as its last result, 
the great fact of spiritual power, that is, of a supreme and eternal God, 
"who is above all, through all, and in all." 1 The philosophy of Bacon 
is pre-eminently a philosophy of fact and reality. Induction and deduc- 
tion, analysis and synthesis, on the basis of fundamental axioms, forms 
the simple and sublime circle of his method, the method of nature and of 
God. 

It must be confessed, however, that the Inductive philosophy occupied 
itself chiefly with material interests, and the mere phenomena of exter- 
nal nature. Its first application to speculative philosophy, by Hobbes of 
Malmesbury, was meagre and imperfect. Misunderstanding its princi- 
ples, he began to theorize, like all his predecessors, and gave to the world, 
in language of great force and precision, a system of downright material- 
ism and fatalism. According to him the one great fact of mind, to which 
all other facts may be reduced, is sensation, "produced by the impact of 
material objects around us upon a material organization which men call 
mind." A fair beginning in England of what Herder calls " the dirt 
philosophy." 

Far superior to Hobbes, in all the elements of mental and moral power, 
Locke soon followed, enamored of the new philosophy, and feeling that 
it might be applied with success to mental science. But he too, imper- 
fectly carried out the Baconian method ; for instead of a thorough psy- 
chological examination of all the facts and elements of consciousness, he 
wandered into theoretical conjectures, and failed to discover some of the 
most obvious principles of the human mind. Nay, he violated his own 
professed method at the very outset, by starting a theoretical inquiry 
into the origin of our ideas, which he derived from sensation and reflec- 
tion. He assumed also the great error of most of his predecessors, 
which makes ideas (cognitions) the mere types or representatives of 
realities, as if the mind could have no direct or immediate knowl- 
edge of such realities, and must depend upon shadows or reflections both 
of the inner and the outer worlds. Like many others also he uses 
the term " ideas" in all sorts of senses, and indeed wavers exceedingly in 
the use of language. Yet Locke possessed great sagacity, and a style of 
much raciness and strength. Some have called it dry, but it is very far 
indeed from possessing this characteristic. It is rather figurative and 

2 See what Bacon in the " Advancement of Learning," says on the supremacy and 
authority of a " Prima Philosophia," Works i. pp. 193-195. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxxi 

popular, than precise and philosophical. Hence the various estimates of 
his system, and hence also its different influence upon different minds. 
Right, perhaps, in rejecting the "innate ideas" of Descartes whom he did 
not quite understand, he failed to recognize the great primal truth which 
underlies the unfortunate nomenclature of the French philosopher; for the 
very first movements of our minds, and all our perceptions of external things, 
involve the possession of fundamental axioms of thought, which can never 
he derived from experience. The mind itself as a unit and a power implies 
this ; for if thoughts, emotions and ideas are derived from experience, 
then the mind itself is derived from experience. Experience or the con- 
tact of mind with matter, and of matter with mind, doubtless is necessary 
as an occasion for the development of our essential thoughts ; but all 
these must first exist in the mind, not indeed formally but potentially, or 
matter would be nothing to mind, as mind would be nothing to matter. 
Hence Locke fell into a great error when he represented all our cogni- 
tions as modifications of sensation and reflection. His generalization is 
narrow and. defective, and has given rise to much false theorizing on 
mental philosophy. Still, Locke's great work on the "Human Under- 
standing" contains innumerable valuable suggestions, and many fine ana- 
lyses of particular powers or states of mind. Nor was he a mere sensa- 
tionalist, as some of the idealist philosophers are pleased to affirm. Prac- 
tically he was a spiritualist, and recognized the great facts of our spiritual 
and moral nature as well as the existence of God and the immortality of 
the* soul. 1 It would be difficult, however, if not impossible, on his theory 
of the origin of ideas, to demonstrate the spirituality of man ; for if the 
mind does not see by its own light, in other words, possess certain pri- 
mary intuitions or fundamental convictions of " common sense," as the 
Scottish philosophers call them, it can never transcend the outward and 
material, or form the remotest conception of spiritual and immortal reali- 
ties. 

It is, therefore, by no means surprising if, in England, the principles of 
Locke, in the hands of less scrupulous men, and particularly of "the 
deistical" writers, as they are improperly called — for, on fundamental 
grounds, they are more atheistic than deistic — were used to defend all the 
errors of sensualism and fatalism. 2 It is the habit of speculative thinkers 
to run errors of this kind into extremes — a happy circumstance, at least, 
for those that come after them ; for, plausible at first, these errors become 
absolutely monstrous when pushed by reckless theorists to their logical 
results. 3 

1 For proof of this we might cite page after page of the " Essay on the Human Un- 
derstanding." We are apprehensive, however, that those who declaim the most vehe- 
mently against Locke as the father of modern sensualism, are not peculiarly intimate 
with his writings. 

8 See the results in Morell's Hist, of Philosophy, p. 96, et seq. 

3 Nowhere was this done more decisively than in France. Thoroughly misunder- 



xxxii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

This was pre-eminently the case with the supposed materialism of the 
Lockean school; hence, in England we find the majority of her ingenious 
and profound thinkers uttering against it a loud and earnest protest. 
Among these, Shaftesbury, Cudworth, Clarke, and More, are especially 
distinguished by learning and genius. But the recoil, as usual, was too vio- 
lent; and we find Berkeley, the amiable and gifted Bishop of Cloyne, the 
most ingenious philosophical thinker of his day, falling into the opposite 
extreme of idealism. Assuming, as Locke did, the common philosophical 
error, that all our knowledge of external nature is mediate and represent- 
ative — a something, so to speak, figured to the mind and standing for the 
outward reality, which we can never know — he showed, on the clearest 
logical grounds, that the existence of matter, separate from the mind, can 
not be proved ; and thus cut up by the roots ail materialism, fatalism, 
and atheism. He does not deem it necessary to deny the existence of the 
external world as a practical reality ; he simply maintains that its exist- 
ence can not be proved on metaphysical grounds. 1 Mind, in his view, is 
first, is fundamental, and real, is the only thing fundamental and real ; and 
matter, if it exist at all, is dependent upon mind, and receives from it 
all its qualities and forms. Pure and devout himself, he exulted in the 
evanescent character of all terrestrial things ; for along with these he saw 
vanishing all error and sin. In the lofty ideal world still left, his rever- 
ent soul, transformed by Christian faith, saw nothing but God and truth, 
immutable and immortal. 

From the very same principles, however, Hume, cold and subtile* de- 
duced an absolute skepticism. As a mere mode of the subjective mind, 
according to him all is ideal, and nothing can be proved. Cause, Sub- 
stance, Spirit, God, Immortality — nay, our most common convictions, re- 
specting our own existence, or the existence of the external world, may 
be only dreams of the dreaming mind. 2 All we can know is our OAvn 
subjective states ; and these, separated from realities by mere represent- 
ative images, for aught that we know, may be the grossest illusions. 
Thus Hume plunged into the abyss of atheism. No wonder that he con- 
fesses, mournfully, the confusion and bewilderment of his mind, in the 

stood, the Lockean philosophy was reduced to the grossest materialism. This, how- 
ever, was accomplished with so much refinement and ingenuity, that it required the 
atheism of d'Holbach, and the horrors of the French revolution, to reveal its enor- 
mity. Condillac, facile and elegant, reigned supreme for years. Cabanis was ap- 
plauded when he said, il Les nerfs, voila tout l'homme !" France, though much im- 
proved, is not yet free from the influence of Condillac. What is Comte's " Philoso- 
phic Positive"' but a refined and systematized materialism'' To substitute the action 
of fixed laws for the free spirit of man, or the free spirit of God, is materialism, with 
its inevitable results of atheism and fatalism. 

1 See for proof of this, " Principles of Human Knowledge," §§ 35-6-7—40. 

- Hume's views are developed, partly in his "Essay on Human Nature," but 
chiefly in his " Inquiry into the Human Understanding." His skepticism is brought 
out fully in the 12th section of the Inquiry. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxxiii 

prosecution of his metaphysical speculations ; — for not even the consola- 
tion of hope was left to his spirit, adrift on the illimitable ocean of specu- 
lative doubt. " The intense view," says he, " of these manifold contra- 
dictions and imperfections in human reason, has so wrought upon me, 
and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, 
and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than 
another." 1 

The Scottish phiiosophers have been stigmatized by the German and 
French idealists as "insular," timid, and empirical: this much, however, 
may be said of them, that, with the exception of Hume, they have been 
wonderfully preserved from all extremes of materialism or spiritualism, 
and have made a good beginning in the science of mental analysis. Dr. 
Reid, a Presbyterian clergyman, and professor in Glasgow University, if 
we except Sir W. Hamilton, is decidedly the most instructive and original 
of them all. Brown is imaginative and inconsequent. His most orig- 
inal and elaborate work (on Causation) is a splendid failure. Stewart, 
while accomplished and learned, is distinguished chiefly as an elegant 
expositor of the views of his predecessors, particularly of Reid. The 
latter has the honor of giving the death-blow to the ideal theory, upon 
which Hume based his skepticism. Imperfectly developed, the position 
of Reid, sound and impregnable as a whole, can only be thoroughly 
appreciated in connection with the comments and criticisms of Sir W. 
Hamilton, who is Reid's proper successor, and the great defender of the 
philosophy of "Common Sense." With his explanations and limitations, 
the doctrine of immediate and presentative knowledge may be considered 
as finally settled. Idealism may be held as a notion or a doubt, but never 
again as a well-grounded scientific conviction. 

But we must go back a little, and take a cursory view of the philosophy 
of Continental Europe, to understand fully the aberrations of speculative 
thought, and appreciate the position and attainments of Sir W. Hamilton, 
who is distinguished as much for his criticisms on the French and Ger- 
man schools, as on those of England and Scotland. 

Descartes is acknowledged, on all hands, as the founder of the Conti- 
nental, if not of all modern speculative philosophy. "With a mind pro- 
found, energetic, and free, spurning the restraints of custom and authority, 
he resolved to investigate the whole subject of mental philosophy, from its 
foundations. 2 Less sagacious than Locke, he yet saw, with great clearness, 
the vast distinction between matter and mind, and commenced his studies 
with a purely psychological method. He did not, indeed, carry out, with 
full consistency, his own fundamental principles of inquiry, and, finally, 

1 Quoted in Dugald Stewart'a Life of Reid, prefixed to Hamilton's edition of Reid's 
Works, p. 13. 

2 The process through which his mind passed, is detailed in the first part of his 
"Discours de la Methode." 

c 



ixxiv INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

defended some egregious errors. At first, he refused to take any thing 
for granted not proved by the facts of consciousness ; but at last seemed 
to take every thing for granted ; so that D'Alembert is justified in saying 
that Descartes " began with doubting of every thing, and ended in believ- 
ing that he had left nothing unexplained." 

As nature is to be studied in itself, by means of observation, so Des- 
cartes justly concluded that mind is to be studied in itself, by means of 
consciousness, or conscious reflection. 1 His " Cogito ergo sum," though 
an apparent petiiio principal, furnished him with the fundamental princi- 
ple or fact of all mental science. For of whatever we doubt, we can not 
doubt that we doubt. Conscious personality, as an intuitive, inalienable 
conviction, is involved in every mental act ; consciousness, therefore, must 
supply us with all the facts of mind, all the laws of thought. Psychology, 
or a well-digested account of our mental phenomena, must thence form 
the basis of all philosophical speculations. 2 

On this ground Descartes asserted the pure spirituality, or, rather, im- 
materiality of mind ; for spirituality is only a negation of what we desig- 
nate material qualities. The profound conviction of Descartes upon this 
point, and his earnest assertion of it, was of immense service to the cause 
of truth. His theory of " innate ideas," unfortunate in its expression and 
application, though founded in truth, led him to assert the validity of all 
ideas lying " clearly and distinctly" in the mind. His criterion of" neces- 
sary" ideas, " clearness and distinctness," originally intended to assert the 
simple authority of consciousness, was easily abused. Here, for example, 
he found, as he supposed, the idea of the absolute and infinite — that is, 
as he explained it, of God ; and believing, like Anselm, that such an idea 
could not come from finite nature ; that infinite and absolute, in his view, 
being positive ideas, and not the mere negation of finite and relative ; he 
concluded that it was a necessary or intuitive idea, an idea from God 
himself, and, therefore, proving a priori, the Divine existence. 3 

But all this is subjective ; how then do we prove the existence of the 
external world, as well as the existence of God ? This, too, exists in the 
mind, clearly and distinctly; and it is not to be supposed, argues Des- 
cartes, forgetting utterly his psychological and truly rational method, that 
God would deceive us in such a matter. From this he infers that the 
external world has a real, and not merely apparent or phenomenal exist- 
ence. Our mental faculties prove the existence of God, and the existence 
of God proves the validity of our mental faculties, is the vicious circle 
which throws inextricable confusion into the Cartesian philosophy. 4 

1 See " Meditations Metaphysiques." — Premiere Med. 

2 Meditation Scconde. CEuvres (Ed. Charpentier), p. 66, et seq. 

3 Meditation Troisieme, p. 87, et seq. See the same views, re-asserted in the 
fourth Meditation, which develops his idea of the true and the false, and the impos- 
sibility that God should deceive us respecting necessary convictions. 

4 Meditation Cinquieme — particularly the close — pp. 107-108. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxxv 

But what is the precise relation of the finite universe to the infinite 
Spirit ? This is a great question which Descartes attempts to answer. 
He says, it is produced at first by God, and not only so, but is constantly 
reproduced. But the world of matter, according to Descartes, is a vast, 
formal mechanism, subject to external laws, and thence guided and con- 
trolled by the constant interposition of the Almighty. Matter and mind 
are distinct ; so much so, that they can have no direct action upon each 
other. Their action and interaction depend upon the all-creating, all-re- 
newing force. Therefore, concludes Descartes, there are no single or sec- 
ondary causes, and the whole universe lies, like a passive machine, in the 
hands of God, controlled forever by his resistless might. 1 

After all, the existence of matter, or of the finite universe, is not then 
proved, except as an outward phenomenal thing, which the next bold, 
consistent thinker will not hesitate to reject, falling back, as he must, on 
his subjective ideas, and constituting the universe of a single infinite sub- 
stance. Thus the germs of an absolute spiritualism are lodged in the 
Cartesian metaphysics, which found their natural development in the 
speculations of Spinosa and Malebranche. 

In Descartes we thus see, what is not uncommon in the history of phi 
losophy, the most singular combinations of truth and error, of weakness and 
strength. For he not only denied the existence and operation of second 
or occasional causes, but he placed the essence of mind in thought — of 
matter, in extension ; thus confounding being or substance with attribute 
or quality, and laying the basis of a consistent, thorough-going panthe- 
ism. 

Malebranche indeed, who embraced these views as the basis of his sys- 
tem, held to the reality of external things, as commonly understood, on 
the authority of Revelation, and remained an orthodox minister of the 
Catholic Church ; but he constituted the universe of thought, and main- 
tained that the human mind sees all things in the Divine, as "its intel- 
ligible world." Like Plato he blended the finite with the infinite, and 
saw there the archetypal ideas of all possible existence. Devout and elo- 
quent, this good man, in the spirit of Berkeley saw no danger in that 
" excessive bright," or rather " dark" of absolute spiritualism, into which 
with unutterable awe, like the angels of heaven, he desired to look. 2 

It required therefore some one of bolder temper, and more relentless 
logic, to take the views of Descartes and push them to their extreme logi- 



1 It is on this ground that M. Jules Simon, in his Introduction to his edition of the 
Works of Descartes, speaks (p. 57) of Cartesianism as "Une Systeme Mecanique. 
See the Sixth Med. p. 109. 

2 Tennemann calls Malebranche " the most profound of the French metaphysicians." 
His works have been published in a convenient form by Charpentier, under the super- 
vision of M. Jules Simon, who has prefixed to them an instructive and elegant intro 
duction 



xxxvi INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

cal issue. Such a man was found in Benedict Spinosa, that profound 
and subtile Jew, whom Novalis in a " furor" of admiration calls " the God 
inspired Spinosa." 1 Ignoring as Descartes had done the proper idea of 
cause, and really identifying being with thought, he posited the existence 
of a single, infinite, all comprehending Substance with two attributes, or 
rather projections of himself (itself?) thought and extension, thought being 
manifest in mind, extension in matter. 2 

As both mind and matter proceed from the same source, or rather are 
attributes of the same substance, he maintained, of course, their interior 
identity. All things come from God, and exist in God, thence all things 
or the universe of material and immaterial forms, are God — not indeed 
God in his absolute essence, but God immanent, that is God embodied or 
manifested. 3 

A fundamental and favorite position of Spinosa's is that " one substance 
can not produce another;" if God therefore seems to produce finite matter 
or finite mind, it is but an extension of himself, or projection into space 
and time of his own inscrutable essence. The cause passes into the effect, 
the effect in this sense is the cause, and vice versa ; so that the ordinary 
idea of cause, and consequently of the creation, is abandoned. The one is 
God absolute, the other is God conditioned, or as he chose to express it, 
the one is Natura naturans, the other is Natura naturata.* 

Nor can we deny, if these fundamental positions are granted as just, 
namely, that the universe is constituted by ideas, and human thought and 
absolute being are identical, that there can be, in the sense of Spinosa, 
only a single all comprehending substance. All else which we call finite 
must be attribute, quality, phenomenon, however vast and varied, how- 
ever refined and beautiful. If all things and all beings are in God, in an 
absolute literal sense, then God is in all things, nay constitutes all things. 
The universe is not dual, but one, and that one, the absolute all. 
Thought is infinite and eternal, and matter is its shadow. The omni- 
presence of God, or the infinite Substance, is what Spinosa calls extension, 
not meaning by extension any thing gross or palpable, but the universal 

1 As proof that Spinosa based his system on the Cartesian metaphysics, we refer 
to the " Principia Philosophise Cartesians, " in the first volume of Spinosa's works 
(Tauchnitz ed. 3 vols, edited by Dr. Bruder), as also to his little tract, " De Emenda- 
tione Intellectus" (vol. ii. p. 7), in which he lays down the true method of philoso- 
phical investigation. The following passage (vol. i. p. 24), deserves particular atten- 
tion. " Hac igitur delecta veritate simul etiam invenit omnium scientiarum funda- 
mentum, ac etiam omnium aliarum veritatum, mensuram ac regulam ; scilicet Quic- 
quid tarn dare ac distinctc percipitur quam istud verum est." The abuse of Descartes' 
criterion has been a source of infinite mischief. 

9 Opera, vol. i. Cog. Mcta. p. 117. Ethica, pp. 187, 190. See also "Ethica," 
Part ii. p. 225. 

3 Opera, vol. i. p. 197. Compare pp. 190 and 204, particularly Prop, xviii. "Deus 
est omnium rerum immanens." 

4 Ethica, Props, xxix. xxx. xxxi. Opera, vol. i. pp. 210, 211. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxxvii 

presence of an infinite essence. 1 Particular things — souls or bodies, are 
only modifications of God. 2 All in fact, is literally and truly God. A 
single idea, namely unity, constitutes and construes the universe. Right 
and wrong, holiness and sin are only different aspects of the same thing. 
In ethics right is the correlate of power, while sin is weakness, negation, 
or deficiency; whence the object of all law is the exercise of force, and all 
law is limitation. The inexorable unity of God ought to be the type of 
the inexorable unity of all government and law. 3 

How much all this differs from the material unity and inexorable fatal- 
ism of Hobbes, or from the grosser pantheism of the old Hindoo philoso- 
phers, it would require some ingenuity to say. It is more refined and 
spiritual perhaps, but the end is the same. So that one is almost tempted 
to believe with Dugald Stewart, in reference to the reproduction of old 
errors, " that human invention is limited like a barrel organ to a specific 
number of tunes." 

It would seem as if Spinosa had carried the rationalistic method of in- 
quiry to its highest point, beyond which no human intellect can go. But 
the spirit of speculative thought is not to be repressed, and slight variations 
will satisfy even the profoundest minds that they have escaped the errors 
of their predecessors, and solved the enigma of the universe. On this 
ground Leibnitz, a man of vast erudition and almost illimitable range of 
thought, endeavored to lay the foundations of a vast superstructure of spir- 
itual philosophy. He rejected the sensational origin of ideas, defended, as 
he supposed, by Locke, and carried out the spiritual views of Descartes 
with reference to mind, giving a better exposition of fundamental ideas, 
and enlarging the criteria of their validity. His method, however, is ration- 
alistic and ontological. 4 It is an attempt to ascertain the possible and the 
actual on what he calls the principle of " contradiction," and of " the 
sufficient reason." The first gives us the possible, or what may be with- 
out a contradiction ; the second, the actual, or what ought to be, on the 
ground of second causes, or " sufficient reason." 

Applying these criteria to things as they are, he finds not only the idea 
of substance, with its attributes of thought and extension (that is, of em- 
bodiment, for such is Spinosa's idea), but also of cause or power, sponta- 
neous and creative ; so that God, as the great primal Substance, or Sub- 
sistence, not only is, but acts and produces. Power does not reside in 
masses, for these are infinitely divisible ; power is inherent in substance 
from which all material qualities must be excluded, so that, strictly 

1 Opera, vol. i. p. 208. 2 Ibid, vol. i. p. 228. 

3 Ibid, vol. i. p. 115. Compare pp. 131, 212, 217. 

4 This fact is well brought out by M. Jaques in the Introduction to his Ed. of the 
Works of Leibnitz, from the press of Charpentier, vol. i. p. 31. His views of the 
human mind are developed in his "Nouveaux Essais," his theosophy or theology in 
the " Monadologie," and " Theodicec." 



xxxviii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

speaking, we come to power or force as a pure immaterial essence. This 
constitutes the basis of existence. Thence spring all the forms and forces 
of the universe, which is dynamical, and not, as Descartes taught, me- 
chanical. 1 

Thus reducing, as usual, all things to the region of pure ideas, or ab- 
stract forms, as we may call them, he endeavors from the supposition of 
an absolute One, or Monad, to construe the universe of matter and of 
mind ; so that his system is a monadology, corresponding in some sense 
to the "numbers" of Pythagoras and Plato. His problem therefore is little 
more than a geometrical proposition. Given one necessary and eternal 
Monas, or Force, to find all other monads or forces. 2 God " geometrizes" 
the \miverse, and does so, apparently, by an evolution of plurality from 
unity. From such a system all dualism of course is excluded. Of mat- 
ter, in its ordinary import, there is none. Identity runs through the 
whole. The universe is one, as God is one. 

Yet Leibnitz admitted the distinct existence of the external world, and 
brought it into union and connection with spirit by means of a system 
of " pre-established harmony." The different monads both of matter and 
of spirit have no intercommunion ; indeed this is impossible on Leibnitz's 
theory ; but they move in unison, like automata, by the "preformed ar- 
rangement of the Eternal Mind. Hence also the doctrines of philosophical 
necessity and optimism. 

By these suppositions it is evident that Leibnitz wished to avoid the 
difficulties which spring from the ill-understood distinctions between mat- 
ter and mind ; on which account his monads or ones are simple forces, 
independent of each other, though springing from the same eternal source, 
possessing inherently the same characteristics, and capable of developing 
themselves in outward shape and act. Some are in a state of stupor, so 
to speak, and constitute matter, yet possess a sort of perceptive power ; 
others are conscious, forming, in the case of those distinct and clear, men 
and angels, of those dull and obscure, the souls of the lower animals. 
Each has its separate sphere, and each is a microcosm of the universe. 3 

The original Monas or Power, however, is recognized as a conscious 
mind, an intelligent, self-controlling cause, capable by a voluntary pro- 
ductive act, of giving rise to distinct, inferior agents, possessed of intelli- 
gence and will ; so that in this respect his views differ from those of 
Spinosa, and so far harmonize with some of the highest forms of moral 
and theological truth. It is on this ground that in his Theodicee, he 
maintains " The conformity of Faith with Reason," and rises to the sub- 
limest heights of religious contemplation. His Theodicee has the charm 

1 CEuvres, vol. ii. p. 463. " See his " Monadologie," passim. 

3 CEuvres, vol. ii. p. 471, "Monadologie." $ 51. Hence the expression, " Chaque 
monade cree represente toute l'univers." Monad. § 62. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xxxn 

of a grand moral epic, in which are celebrated the perfections of the eter- 
nal Jehovah. The distinguished Genevese philosopher Bonnet tells us, 
that he used it as " a manual of devotion." 

But in the hands of others, and especially of less devotional minds, the 
Leibnitzian monadology, involving in its last analysis the interior identity 
of subject and object, of finite and infinite, and constituting the universe 
of simple spiritual forces, supplied the scientific basis for a system of ideal- 
ism. His speculations found a congenial home in the minds of his coun- 
trymen. In nearly all the theories which have successively followed each 
other among that speculative people, Leibnitz constantly reappears. It 
is the same lofty, but mysterious and fanciful melody, with endless and 
ever-recurring variations. 

In the hands of Wolf, who attempted to methodize the philosophy of 
his master, it lost its warmth and grandeur, and appeared as a formal 
system of ideal abstractions, giving rise to an arid skepticism, which lasted 
for many years. 

The eighteenth century closed with Kant and the Kantian philosophy, 
in which the possibility of metaphysics or ontology as a science is denied, 
and, as many think, completely demolished. Even reason is shown to be 
not only weak, but illusive, so that " apodictical," that is, demonstrative 
judgments, of absolute certainty, are proved to be impossible. This is 
the object of the " Kritik of Pure Reason" {reiner Vernunft), so that to 
speak of "the Kantian metaphysics," as many do, or to cite the Konigs- 
berg philosopher as an authority for the absolute demonstrations of 
" Reason," is a practical solecism. Kant swept the whole field of specu- 
lation ; and though denying neither the external nor the internal world, 
as practical realities, proved that neither the reason nor the understand- 
ing, formal powers both, gives us any thing in its absolute certainty. Both 
space and time, unity and cause, according to Kant, are subjective ideas, 
by means of which we systematize our knowledge, but can never be 
shown to have a real, or independent existence. 

Thus, again, all things are reduced to pure ideas or abstractions. 
Reality escapes into the void, and truth remains, like a shadowy island 
in the midst of a boundless gulf. " The region," says Kant, " of the pure 
understanding, is an island, and inclosed by nature itself in unchangeable 
limits. It is the region of truth [an engaging title], surrounded by a wide 
and stormy ocean." l 

But the nature of Kant, like that of every other man, can not be satis- 
fied with abstractions ; and though truth is not theoretically demonstra- 
ble, it. is necessary, it is real. Our moral nature and practical wants de- 
mand it ; and not only demand it, but prove it. So that what is demon- 

1 Kritik of Pure Reason. — Eng. Tr. p. 222. As Sir W. Hamilton has shown, Kant 
is by no means precise in the use either of Vernunft or Verstand. His island of the 
pure understanding, after all, is a fabulous one. 



xl INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

stratcd to be illusive on one side of our nature, according to Kant, is 
proved to be real on the other — a strange logical contradiction — for which 
Kant poorly accounts, but to which he most earnestly clings. A happy 
inconsistency of which the most astute philosophers are not unfrequently 
guilty. Hence his "Kritik of the Practical Reason," which gives us all 
moral truths, God, the soul, and immortality. The conscience, the affec- 
tions, the longings of the soul, the wants of the individual, and the wants 
of society, demand a God and a life to come ; and as all things are adapt- 
ed to each other, and all permanent wants are met, God and a life to 
come are given in the Practical Reason. God exists for man ; man exists 
for God. Responsibility and justice, love and worship, are real and eter- 
nal. 

Here, then, Kant lays a broad foundation for religion and morality. 

But why should our nature be in contradiction ? Above all, whj 
should Reason, which we are told is highest in man, mislead us ? Then* 
must be some great error here ; and Sir W. Hamilton, to whom we refei 
the reader, in his Critique on the Eclectic Philosophy, thinks that tho 
error consists in making reason not simply " weak, but delusive." 

Fichte, ambitious of absolute knowledge (Wissaischaftslehre), young, 
ardent, enthusiastic, with great force of character, and an imagination 
which nothing could limit, took up the problem of the Kantian philoso- 
phy, and endeavored to determine the relation of subject and object, of 
finite and infinite. His mode of solution is summary ; object does not 
exist except as posited by subject. That is, the human mind creates its 
own intelligible world. Subject and object are one. A subjective ideal- 
ism is the true philosophy. God exists, but exists in consciousness ; he is 
known only as the Moral Order (moraliscke Ordnung) of the world. 1 Of 
course, such a system of subjective idealism, though held by its author 
with a lofty moral heroism, must give rise to the most startling errors 
and extravagancies. " To-morrow, gentlemen." he said, on one occasion, 
with singular audacity, " I shall create God." By this he meant that 
he would develop the process by which God comes into consciousness as 
subject and object. Fichte strenuously denied the charge of atheism, and, 
in later life, somewhat modified his views — but, at best, he is seen ever- 
more hovering over the abyss of absolute nothing. " The sum total," says 
he, " is this : there is absolutely nothing permanent without me or within 
me, but only an unceasing change ; I know absolutely nothing of any 
existence, not even of my own. I myself know nothing, and am nothing. 
Images (Bilder) there are ; they constitute all that apparently exists, and 
what they know of themselves is after the manner of images ; images that 
pass and vanish, without there being aught to witness their transition ; 
that consist, in fact, of the images of images, without significance and 

1 Sittenlehre (1798), pp. 184, 189. See also his " Gottliche Weltordnung." 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xli 

without an aim. I myself am one of these images ; nay, I am not even 
thus much, but only a confused image of images. All reality is converted 
into a marvelous dream, without a life to dream of, and without a mind 
to dream ; into a dream made up only of a dream of itself. Perception 
is a dream ; thought, the source of all the existence and all the reality 
which I imagined to myself of my existence, of my power, of my destina- 
tion, is the dream of that dream." 1 

It is not necessary here to give any detailed account of the Philosophy 
of Schelling, the proper successor of Fichte, as this has been done by Sir 
W. Hamilton (Discussions, p. 26, et seq.) in a manner so clear and ade- 
quate. The philosophical patriarch of Berlin is an idealist, though labor- 
ing all his life long to reach "the real," and professing in his old age, to be- 
lieve in a personal God , in the divine mission of Christ, and the immor- 
tality of the soul. His method, however, is rationalistic, and the result 
ideal, and ideal only — that is, identity of subject and object, not in the 
individual mind, as in the philosophy of Fichte, but in the absolute object, 
infinite and eternal. Psychology is abandoned as incapable of leading to 
absolute reality ; God, the absolute, the all-comprehending is discovered 
only to the supernatural intuition of the human mind. Hence knowledge 
and being correspond. They are correlates. To know the Divine, the 
soul must be divine ; to discover the absolute, it must itself be absolute. 
Thus the system of Schelling may be described as a transcendental or ab- 
solute idealism — the title, in fact, of one of his principal works, " System 
des Transcendentalen Idealismus." 2 

Hegel, who commenced his studies with Schelling, and, while possess- 
ing less imagination, had more logical power, is the real Coryphaeus of 
German idealism. He rejects what he conceives to be the partial views 
of both Fichte and Schelling, and attempts to construct a purely rational 
or ideal system, without assuming " the finite Ego" of Fichte, or " the in- 
tellectual intuition" of Schelling. He begins with nothing — that is, a pure 
abstraction — which, existing as thought, in his view, posits a real idea, 
as the basis of all logic and all philosophy. Nothing, for example, is the 
extreme of two contradictory poles — nothing — something — and the rela- 
tion between them. This is the order or process of thought ; this also 
must be the order or process of the universe. 3 Thus, unconsciously to him- 
self, he assumes the reality of thought, and not only so, but its identity 

1 Quoted by Sir W. Hamilton. — Reid's Works, p. 129. The translation may be 
relied upon as precise and accurate. Fichte is here seen to be the most thorough- 
going and consistent idealist. And yet in the " Bestimmung des Menschen," how 
loftily he speaks of God, of duty, and of destiny. 

2 For one of the most ample, and satisfactory accounts of Schelling and his philoso- 
phy, see M. Willm's Histoire de Philosophic Allemande. — Tome iii. 

3 The following are his propositions upon this point : 1. Thought is the real essence 
of man. 2. Thought is the essence of the world — the reality of thi?igs. 3. The true 
knowledge of things is the work of my thought; therefore my thought is identical with 
absolute thought. See Encyclopsedie, § 19-83. 



xlii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

with existence. He is consistent enough, however, to maintain that we 
can know nothing of either, except in their relation. His universe is one — 
but it is a universe of relations ; we can never say that it is, but only be- 
coming. The whole is negative and positive — this and that — nothing and 
something at once ; in other words, all is absolute and concrete, which 
we can never know except in their eternal oscillation. Thus subject and 
object, finite and infinite are lost in the boundless relations of absolute 
thought. 1 So that we may justly say, that the entire Hegelian philoso- 
phy, grand and comprehensive as it seems, lies between two Zeros, or 
nothings. This, then, is the sum of idealism, the apex of speculative or 
ontological thought. Philosophy has reached its goal, beyond which is 
nothing. 

We fully agree with Michelet, of Berlin, one of the most distinguished 
expounders of the Hegelian philosophy, in his " Geschichte der letzen 
Systeme der Philosophie in Deutschland, von Kant bis Hegel," that the 
true secret of nearly all the German philosophy is idealism, first subjective 
in Kant and Fichte ; secondly, objective in Schelling ; and lastly, absolute 
in Hegel. "When thought," says Michelet, "becomes the leading prin- 
ciple, then one of two things follows ; either real being or object entirely 
vanishes, and the subject of thought remains the sole reality — the philoso- 
phy of Kant and Fichte — or thought realizes itself in the object, and 
reality becomes intelligence — the philosophy of Schelling ; finally Hegel, 
who reunites the two opposite systems, and blends together idealism and 
realism, has carried philosophy to that lofty elevation, that last degree 
of development, where it deserves the name of Absolute Idealism." 

What then, in the way of originality, is left to the speculative thinker, 
who wishes to make a tour of exploration in the region of the absolute ? 
One would say nothing. Cousin, however, replies, Eclecticism! Psychol- 
ogy and Ontology must be brought together. The passage must be made 
from the one to the other. Schelling, indeed, has pronounced it impossi- 
ble. Hegel has rejected the thought with disdain. The finite and formal, 
he would say, can never give the real and the absolute. But it can, is 
the decisive claim of Cousin, ingenious, learned, and eloquent, and there- 
fore bold and enterprising. For, in his view, man is both personal and 
impersonal — that is, finite and infinite ; personal and finite in his under- 
standing and will, impersonal and infinite in his spontaneity and reason. 
He can transcend himself, he can see God in his absolute essence, he can 
construe the universe from this awful height. 2 The words mystericnis and 
incomprehensible, Cousin leaves to theology. 3 Knowledge, absolute and 
perfect, the comprehension of God, and in God of all things, he claims for 
philosophy ; for once more being and thought are identical, the process 
of logic is the process of the universe. 

1 Encyclopedic, § 93. 2 Histoirc de la Philos. (Intro.) p. 95. 

3 See Introduction a l'Hist. dc la Philos. p. 18, p. 97. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xhii 

But we leave him in the hands of Sir William Hamilton, who as 
Cousin himself confesses, has given one of the most candid and luminous 
statements of the Eclectic theory, and presented objections to its funda- 
mental positions, which have never been answered. Cousin has attempted 
a reply, but without changing the case in the slightest degree. It is 
quite amusing to see how Morell, after dogmatically asserting over and 
over again the validity of the Eclectic method, which he makes his own, 
turns away from the impregnable positions of the Scottish philosopher. 
It is as if a besieging general had proudly carried all the redoubts 
and outworks of a beleaguered city, and coming up close to the walls, 
bristling with cannon, had made a handsome bow, and retired! "And 
here," says he, " we freely confess that we are not prepared to combat, 
step by step, the weighty arguments by which the Scottish metaphysician 
seeks to establish the negative character of this great fundamental con- 
ception ; neither on the other hand are we prepared to admit his infer- 
ence." 1 

"We think Morell does not fully appreciate Sir W. Hamilton's position, 
for even were it admitted, it is not necessary to abandon our belief in 
God and the soul, as immaterial and immortal realities. We simply 
confess, humbly and reverently, that we can not comprehend them in 
their essence. It is only as revealed to us in finite, yet august and 
fair forms, in nature or in " Scripture," that we can appreciate their 
vast and momentous relations. To us the Infinite Good, the All Beauti- 
ful and Everlasting is known, and yet unknown, an apparent paradox, 
but true as the boundless and ineffable nature of infinite existence. 2 It 
is on this ground that the Apostle Paul prays, with a philosophy as pro- 
found as it is devout, that the Ephesian converts might " know the love 
of God, which passeth knowledge." 

But more of this presently. In the mean while, let us indicate as 
briefly as possible, the fundamental views of Sir W. Hamilton, and the 
amount of his contributions to mental science. 

The leading principle of his philosophy is, that all our knowledge is 
conditioned and relative, true so far as it goes, but limited. Good, of 
course, for all practical purposes, both of life and religion, but not abso- 
lute or unconditioned, not infinite or boundless, and therefore not, in the 
scientific sense, perfect. 

It is a legitimate inference from this that the science of the absolute is 
impossible. We can neither know (scientifically) the finite absolute — 
that is, mind or matter in its interior essence, or unconditioned state — 
nor the infinite absolute — that is, the essential totality, or unity of all 

1 Hist, of the Philos. of the Nineteenth Century. — Am. Ed. p. 656. 

3 We might have said, true as the finite and conditioned nature of the human soul. 
The finite may adore, but can never comprehend the infinite God. In this respect, 
we may well say with the prophet : " Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself!" 



xliv INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

things, including infinite space or infinite duration, as also, infinite Spirit, 
which is God in his unlimited and eternal essence. To be known in any 
way, God must be manifested under conditions and limits, as possessing 
specific attributes, or performing specific acts, beyond which the loftiest 
intellect must exclaim reverently, " the depths !" 

And thus philosophy, as well as religion, is compelled to acknowledge 
the presence every where, in nature, in man, and in God, of inscrutable 
mystery. 

On this ground the French and German Ontologies are demolished. 
The adventurous wing of speculation is checked. Philosophy is brought 
from the ' ; dim obscure" of the possible and transcendent, into the clear 
atmosphere of the actual and concrete. Pantheism is made impossible. 
' Religion is left to stand upon its own grounds ; and man, the finite and 
fallible, is left to adore the One living and true God, unknown as essence, 
„ but well known as goodness, holiness, and love. 

The reason, in this view, does not contradict the conscience and the 
heart ; but rather aids them in the devout recognition of the invisible 
and ineffable Causa Causarum. Transcendent wonder, humility, and 
trust, are its necessary moral results. 

This fundamental principle of Sir "William Hamilton's philosophy, is 
not reached in an empirical or merely speculative way. It is not an 
hypothesis or an assumption ; but a fact reached by a rigid analysis of 
human thought. Nothing is assumed but the authority of Consciousness, 
which of course must be assumed, or thought itself is null. 

Hence it has been the life-labor of this acute and candid thinker to 
ascertain the ultimate facts of consciousness. 

Deduction, induction — in fact the first processes of thought — imply cer- 
tain fundamental principles, convictions, intuitions, or whatever they may 
be termed of the " Communis Sensus," or Common Consciousness. To 
these all our knowledge, all our reasonings, must be referred as basis or 
touchstone. These are original as the mind itself — bringing with them 
no reasons or explanations. They are not to be proved, but seen, felt, real- 
ized. Hence they have been termed, revelations, fundamental convic- 
tions, axioms of thought, interior 'perceptions, intuitions, inward behold- 
ings, decisions of the reason, categories of thought, and so forth. 

What these are is a question to be determined, by no a priori reasoning, 
but by a simple appeal to universal consciousness. The criterion of Des- 
cartes, <: clearness and distinctness" is not sufficient. They must possess 
other features ; thus one of the great objects of Hamilton's investigations, 
has been to settle the criterion by which to try the validity of what are 
claimed as fundamental or infallible convictions. This criterion he finds 
not merely in clearness, but in simplicity, necessity, and universality. 
They must be simple and incomprchejisible — not modifications or infer- 
ences ; necessary and imiversal — acknowledged by all men ; and possess 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xlv 

a sort of unique or peculiar evidence, which can neither be proved or 
disproved by any thing clearer or more evident. 1 

Hamilton, on these grounds, proceeds to ascertain what these funda- 
mental axioms of thought are. Among those upon which he has dwelt 
the most fully, as defended by Reid, in opposition to the idealists and 
skeptics, is the conviction not only of our own being, or the " Cogito ergo 
sum" of Descartes, but the conviction of an exterior existence. Mind is 
real — matter, or whatever it may be called, the external world, the not 
me, is also real. 

Hence also he contends that Perception is immediate or direct, present- 
ative as he calls it, and not mediate or representative. Idealism therefore 
is impossible. 

But he finds, by an appeal to conscience, to which all must respond, 
that thought, as actualized, is brought into relations or conditions. It 
involves ever the idea of subject and object, the thinking mind, and the 
thing thought of. The thought of cause is impossible without effect, of 
substance without qualities, of matter without extension or space, of mind 
without thought. Strip a thing of all conceivable qualities, it becomes an 
abstraction, it is, to us, a practical nothing. It may exist in reality, but it is 
not cognizable in thought. It escapes into the void. In a word, all thought 
is conditioned, whence the absolute or unconditioned as such, is not cog- 
nizable ; above all, can not be made the subject of scientific speculation. 

Thought would thus seem to play unconsciously between two extremes, 
or poles, as if it belonged in part to the finite, in part to the infinite, or as if 
neither finite nor infinite expressed the true reality, except by an apparent 
contradiction. So that all subjects of human inquiry have, so to speak, 
two sides, or two poles, which united give us reality. For example, man 
' is free, but he is also under necessity — freedom and necessity may both be 
predicated of him, in the one case as a finite personality, in the other as a 
part of a whole, or as the object of divine control. Space may be spoken of 
' as limited, and at the same time as unlimited. But we can not conceive 
either of these as possible — for beyond all space as limited is a boundless 
region, which belongs to it as much as the other ; but this also as unlim- 
ited we can not conceive, for it advances as we advance, and beyond our 
furthest range of conception is unlimited extension. But practically space 
is limited, in this finite world of ours, as we speak of it ; so that we are 
justified in saying it is both finite and infinite, limited and unlimited. 

Hence Sir William Hamilton's enunciation of the axiom : " That posi- 
tive thought lies in the limitation or conditioning of one or other of two 
opposite extremes, neither of which as unconditioned, can be realized to 
the mind as possible, and yet of which as contradictories, one or other 
must, by the fundamental laws of thought, be recognized as necessary. 15 

1 See Reid's Works, Note A, $ 4. 2 Reid's Works, i. p. 743. 



xlvi INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

On this fundamental principle of thought being conditioned, Hamilton 
endeavors to generalize the cognizable ; with what success our readers 
must judge for themselves. For it is in the application of some compre- 
hensive principle like this that the greatest diversity of opinion is likely 
to prevail. It is here also that error is most liable to intervene. 

We confess to an honest doubt respecting the application of the princi- 
ple to the solution of what seems to be an infallible and authoritative 
conviction of the human mind, namely that of cause, or what may be 
termed perhaps with greater propriety, productive power. This idea or 
conviction is resolved by our author into the incompetence of the human 
mind. This appears to us inadequate ; for we are as conscious, each of 
us, of being a productive cause, as we are of possessing existence, or a 
distinct, self-contained personality. That is, we are conscious, in every 
voluntary mental, and even physical act, of being a productive will. 
This conviction is simple, original, necessary, universal, and inalienable. 
It is given as a primary datum in consciousness. Hamilton indeed con- 
tends that it can not possess this character, because it is given only in 
specific acts ; but so also is every other spontaneous conviction. We re- 
member the past — therefore past knowledge, though given in conscious- 
ness, when remembered, is for this reason, mediate and representative. 
It is not the source of our conviction of our personal existence, which is 
given only in specific, mental states or acts. Properly speaking, we are 
not conscious of continuous existence, but only of present existence. We 
infer our past existence from memory ; were that lost, our knowledge of 
personal identity in its relation to the past, would be lost also. So that 

' conscious existence is given us in specific and instantaneous acts. The 
conviction or consciousness of being a cause, or a productive Will, is given 
to each of us in the same way, and brings with it equal authority. 

But can we transfer that idea to what we call external causes, of which 
we have no consciousness ; and can we claim on this ground to know 
any thing satisfactorily of real causes in nature ? By analog)' we should 
seem justified in doing so ; and yet we must always feel that there is 
something in natural causes beyond our grasp ; for one cause implies an- 
other, and another, and so on, till we recognize a great first Cause or Pro- 
ductive Will, of which man is the image. Here we reach the infinite, 
and how that is related to the finite, we do not and we can not know. 
Here then comes in the incompetence of human thought, and the great 
law of our philosopher. We know only "in part." Still we are satis- 

' fied, on the ground of consciousness, that we ourselves are productive 
causes, and by analogy, we infer that there must be a great Productive 
Cause of the Universe. The inference is almost as instantaneous and per- 
fect as the act of consciousness. It seems equally infallible ; so much so, 
that many have maintained that it is not an inference, but an original 
conviction given in conciousness. 



INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. xlvii 

It would seem, however, that in their last analysis, all finite causes, 
and even our own individual productive wills may be resolved, at least 
in thought, into the one infinite and eternal Cause or Will, where we lose 
ourselves. Here, therefore, we are saved, and so restored to ourselves 
and to God, by acknowledging our mental incompetence. The matter is 
" too high," we can not "attain unto it." 

It is possible that the defect which we feel in the application of Sir W. 
Hamilton's principle to the primary conviction of cause, may arise from 
our imperfect conception of his views, or from his own inadequate, per- 
haps imperfect statement of it. For we would respectfully inquire, 
whether the particular position which he takes for its defense and eluci- 
dation may not fairly and logically be run into pantheism. (See Discus- 
sions pp. 575-583.) It is true indeed that something can never come 
from nothing ; for that would contradict our very idea of cause. Ulti- 
mately God must be conceived of as Cause of all that exists ; so that 
when he creates, he does not create out of nothing, but out of himself. 
That is to say, for the language must not be understood grossly and 
figuratively, he creates by his essential productive power. How, we know 
not, and can not know. 

By what means then do we save ourselves from pantheism ? By falling 
back upon our personal consciousness — and so recognizing the fundamental 
conviction of personal causality, as well as the distinction between subject 
and object, the me and the not me, which Sir "William Hamilton has 
demonstrated. In our consciousness, we are free Productive Wills, all 
reasoning to the contrary notwithstanding ; and God himself must be a 
free Productive Will ; as Sir W. Hamilton, in his very explanation of this 
matter, frankly acknowledges. So that if there is any difficulty here, we 
shall cite Sir W. Hamilton against himself. For on the ground of "men- 
tal incompetence," or the impossibility of conceiving two contradictories, he 
asserts that •" there is no ground for inferring a certain fact to be impos- 
sible, merely from our inability to conceive it possible." So that, he adds, 
" if the causal judgment be not an express affirmation of the mind, the 
unconditional testimony of consciousness, that we- are, though we know 
not how, the true and responsible authors of our actions" — (conscious 
then of being productive wills, or causes) — "not merely the worthless links 
in an adamantine series of effects and causes." 1 

Thus, on the same ground, though we find it impossible to conceive 

' how matter can spring from spirit ; or how the universe of finite minds, 
or finite forms, can be created by Jehovah, we feel assured, that as we 

( are free Productive Wills, he too must be a free Productive Will. If we 

1 And again, " How, therefore, I repeat, moral liberty is possible in man or God, 
we are utterly unable, speculatively to understand. But practically, the fact that we 
are free is given to us in the consciousness of an uncompromising law of duty, in the 
consciousness of our moral accountability." Appendix A, p. 587. 



xlvin INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 

are separated, by our personality, from the not me, or the finite world 
without us, he too by his personality (that is, his free causative will), is 
separated from the finite universe which he has made. He may be in it, 
as a presence or a power, but he is above it, as a. free creative spirit, who 
controls it with the supreme and eternal dominion of Proprietor and Lord. 
If we say, that potentially the sum of being or existence is not increased 
by the creation ; or rather if we say, that we are incompetent to conceive 
how the sum of being is increased ; no matter ; the incompetence is the 
same in both cases. We exist — we are free — we are conscious personal- 
ities ; that is enough. And so it is enough to say, that God exists — is 
free — is an infinite yet conscious personality, who creates all things " by 
the word of his power," or, which is the same thing, by his inherent 
creative energy. " God said. Let there be light, and there was light !" 

Here then we reverently unite with our author, in adoring, with pro- 
found humility, the ineffable Jehovah, the father of our spirits, who is 
" above all, through all, and in all." In conclusion also, we commend to 
thoughtful minds the cultivation of a philosophy so humble and trustful, 
and yet so profound and comprehensive. " For I may indeed say," is the 
testimony of our author, " with Chrysostom, The foundation of our phi- 
losophy is humility. (Homil. de Perf. Evang.) For it is professedly a 
demonstration of the impossibility of that wisdom in high matters, which 
the apostle prohibits us even to attempt ; and it proposes, from the limit- 
ation of the human powers, from our impotence to comprehend, what 
however we must admit, to show articulately why ' the secret things of 
God can not but be to man past finding out.' Humility thus becomes the 
cardinal virtue, not only of revelation, but of reason." 1 

1 The whole passage is worthy of careful study as indicating the true relations of 
reason and faith, of philosophy and theology. See Appendix A, p. 588. 

Hartford, Conn., May, 1853. 



PHILOSOPHY. 



I.— PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. . 

IN REFERENCE TO COUSIN'S DOCTRINE 
OF THE INFINITO-ABSOLUTE. 1 

(October, 1829.) 

Cours de Philosophie. Par M. Victor Cousin, Professeur de 
Philosophic a la Faculte des Lettres de Paris. — Introduction a 
VHistoire de la Philosophie. 8vo. Paris, 1828. 

- The delivery of these Lectures excited an unparalleled sensa- 
tion in Paris. Condemned to silence during the reign of Jesuit 
ascendency, M. Cousin, after eight years of honorable retirement, 
not exempt from persecution, had again ascended the Chair of 

1 [Translated into French, by M. Peisse ; into Italian, by S. Lo Gatto : also in 
Cross's Selections from the Edinburgh Review. 

This article did not originate with myself. I was requested to write it by my 
friend, the late accomplished Editor of the Review, Professor Napier. Personally, I 
felt averse from the task. I was not unaware, that a discussion of the leading doc- 
trine of the book would prove unintelligible, not only to " the general reader," but, 
with few exceptions, to our British metaphysicians at large. But, moreover, I was 
still farther disinclined to the undertaking, because it would behove me to come for 
ward in overt opposition to a certain theory, which, however powerfully advocated, I 
felt altogether unable to admit : while its author, M. Cousin, was a philosopher for 
whose genius and character I already had the warmest admiration — an admiration 
which every succeeding year has only augmented, justified, and confirmed. Nor, in 
saying this, need I make any reservation. For I admire, even where I dissent ; and 
were M. Cousin's speculations on the Absolute utterly abolished, to him would still 
remain the honor, of doing more himself, and of contributing more to what has been 
done by others, in the furtherance of an enlightened philosophy, than any other living 
individual in France — I might say in Europe. Mr. Napier, however, was resolute ; 
it was the first number of the Review under his direction ; and the criticism was hastily 
written. In this country the reasonings were of course not understood, and naturally, 
for a season, declared incomprehensible. Abroad, in France, Germany, Italy, and 
latterly in America, the article has been rated higher than it deserves. The illustri- 
ous thinker, against one of whose doctrines its argument is directed, was the first to 



10 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

Philosophy ; and the splendor with which he recommenced his 
academical career, more than justified the expectation which his 
recent celebrity as a writer, and the memory of his earlier prelec- 
tions, had inspired. Two thousand auditors listened, all with ad- 
miration, many with enthusiasm, to the eloquent exposition of 
doctrines intelligible only to the few ; and the oral discussion of 
philosophy awakened in Paris, and in France, an interest unex- 
ampled since the days of Abelard. The daily journals found it 
necessary to gratify, by their earlier summaries, the impatient 
curiosity of the public ; and the lectures themselves, taken in 
short-hand, and corrected by the Professor, propagated weekly 
the influence of his instruction to the remotest provinces of the 
kingdom. 

Nor are the pretensions of this doctrine disproportioned to the 
attention which it has engaged. It professes nothing less than to 
be the complement and conciliation of all philosophical opinion ; 
and its author claims the glory of placing the key-stone in the 
arch of science, by the discovery of elements hitherto unobserved 
among the facts of consciousness. 

Before proceeding to consider the claims of M. Cousin to orig- 
inality, and of his doctrine to truth, it is necessary to say a few 
words touching the state and relations of philosophy in France. 

After the philosophy of Descartes and Malebranche had sunk 
into oblivion, and from the time that Condillac, exaggerating the 
too partial principles of Locke, had analyzed all knowledge into 
sensation, Sensualism (or more correctly, Sensuism), as a psycho- 
logical theory of the origin of our cognitions, became, in France, 
not only the dominant, but almost the one exclusive opinion. It 
"* was believed that reality and truth were limited to experience, 
and experience was limited to the sphere of sense ; while the very 
highest faculties of mind were deemed adequately explained when 
recalled to perceptions, elaborated, purified, sublimated, and trans- 
speak of it in terms which, though I feel their generosity, I am ashamed to quote. J 
may, however, state, that maintaining always his opinion, M. Cousin (what is rare, 
especially in metaphysical discussions), declared, that it was neither unfairly combated 
nor imperfectly understood. — In connection with this criticism, the reader should com- 
pare what M. Cousin has subsequently stated in defense and illustration of his system, 
in Ins Preface to the new edition of the Introduction a VHistoire dc la Philosophic, 
and Appendix to the fifth lecture {(Euvrcs, Serie II. Tome i. pp. vii., ix., and pp. 112- 
129) ; — in his Preface to the second edition, and his Advertisement to the third edition 
of the Fragments Pkilosophiqucs (CEuvres, S. III. T. iv.) — and in his Prefatory Notice 
to the Pcnsees dc Pascal ((Euvrcs, S. IV. T. i.) — On the other hand, M. Peissc has 
ably advocated the counterview, in his Preface and Appendix to the Fragments dc 
Philosophic, &c] 



PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE ; AND IN SCOTLAND. 11 

formed. From the mechanical relations of sense with its object, 
it was attempted to solve the mysteries of will and intelligence : 
the philosophy of mind was soon viewed as correlative, to the phys- 
iology of organization. The moral nature of man was at last 
'formally abolished, in its identification with his physical; mind 
became a reflex of matter ; thought a secretion of the brain. 

A doctrine so melancholy in its consequences, and founded on 
principles thus partial and exaggerated, could not be permanent : 
a reaction was inevitable. The recoil, which began about twenty 
years ago, has been gradually increasing ; and now it is perhaps 
even to be apprehended, that its intensity may become excessive. 
As the poison was of foreign growth, so also has been the antidote, 
The doctrine of Condillac was, if not a corruption, a development 
of the doctrine of Locke ; and, in returning to a better philosophy, 
the French are still obeying an impulsion communicated from with- 
out. This impulsion may be traced to two different sources — to 
the philosophy of Scotland, and to the philosophy of Germany . 

In Scotland, a philosophy had sprung up, which, though pro- 
fessing, equally with the doctrine of Condillac, to build only on 
experience, did not, like that doctrine, limit experience to the 
relations of sense and its objects. Without vindicating to man 
more than a relative knowledge of existence, and restricting the 
science of mind to an observation of the fact of consciousness, it, 
however, analyzed that fact into a greater number of more import- 
ant elements than had been recognized in the school of Condillac, 
' It showed that phenomena were revealed in thought which could 
not be resolved into any modification of sense — external or inter- 
nal. It proved that intelligence supposed principles, which, as 
the conditions of its activity, can not be the results of its opera- 
tion ; that the mind contained knowledges, which, as primitive, 
universal, necessary, are not to be explained as generalizations 
from the contingent and individual, about which alone all expe- 
rience is conversant. The phenomena of mind were thus distin- 
guished from the phenomena of matter ; and if the impossibility 
of materialism were not demonstrated, there was, at least, demon- 
strated the impossibility of its proof. 

This philosophy, and still more the spirit of this philosophy, 
was calculated to exert a salutary influence on the French. And 
such an influence it did exert. For a time, indeed, the truth 
operated in silence ; and Reid and Stewart had already modified 
the philosophy of France, before the French were content to ac- 



12 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

knowledge themselves their disciples. In the works of Degerando 
and Laromiguiere, may be traced the influence of Scottish specu- 
lation ; but it is to Royer-Collard, and, more recently, to Jouffroy, 
that our countrymen are indebted for a full acknowledgment of' 
their merits, and for the high and increasing estimation in which 
their doctrines are now held in France. M. Royer-Collard, whose 
authority has, in every relation, been exerted only for the benefit 
of his country, and who, once great as a professor, is now not less 
illustrious as a statesman, in his lectures, advocated with distin- 
guished ability the principles of the Scottish school ; modestly 
content to follow, while no one was more entitled to lead. M. 
Jouffroy, by his recent translation of the works of Dr. Reid, and 
by the excellent preface to his version of Mr. Dugald Stewart's 
" Outlines of Moral Philosophy," has likewise powerfully co- 
operated to the establishment, in France, of a philosophy equally 
opposed to the exclusive Sensualism of Condillac, and to the ex- 
clusive Rationalism of the new German school. 

Germany may be regarded, latterly at least, as the metaphysi- 
cal antipodes of France. The comprehensive and original genius 
of Leibnitz, itself the ideal abstract of the Teutonic character, 
had reacted powerfully on the minds of his countrymen ; and 
Rationalism, (more properly Intellectualism, 1 ) has from his time, 
always remained the favorite philosophy of the Germans. On the 
principle of this doctrine, it is in Reason alone that truth and 
reality are to be found. Experience affords only the occasions 
' on which intelligence reveals to us the necessary and universal 
notions of which it is the complement ; and these notions consti- 
' tute at once the foundation of all reasoning, and the guarantee of 
our whole knowledge of reality. Kant, indeed, pronounced the 
philosophy of Rationalism a mere fabric of delusion. He declared 
that a science of existence was beyond the compass of our facul- 
ties ; that pure reason, as purely subjective, and conscious of 



1 [On the modem commutation of Intellect or Intelligence (Novs, Mens, Inlcllechu, 
Versland), and Reason (Aoyor, Ratio, Vernunft), see Dissertations on Reid, pp. 668, 
069, 693. (This has nothing to do with the confusion of Reason and Reasoning.) 
Protesting, therefore, against the abuse, I historically employ the terms as they were 
employed by the philosophers here commemorated. This unfortunate reversal has 
been propagated to the French philosophy, and also adopted in England by Coleridge 
and his followers. — I may here notice that I use the term Understanding, not for the 
noetic faculty, intellect proper, or place of principles, but for the dianoclic or discursive 
faculty, in its widest signification, for the faculty of relations or comparison; and thus 
in the meaning in which Versland is now employed by the Germans. In this sense 
I have been able to be uniformly consistent.] 



PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY. 13 

nothing but itself, was therefore unable to evince the reality of 
aught beyond the phenomena of its personal modifications. 1 But 
scarcely had the critical philosopher accomplished the recognition 
of this important principle, the result of which was, to circum- 
scribe the field of speculation by narrow bounds ; than from the 
very disciples of his school there arose philosophers, who, despising 
the contracted limits, and humble results, of a philosophy of ob- 
servation, re-established, as the predominant opinion, a bolder 
and more uncompromising Rationalism than any that had ever 
previously obtained for their countrymen the character of philo- 
sophic visionaries- — 

" Gens ratione ferox, et mentem pasta chimseris." & 
("Minds fierce for reason, and on fancies fed.") 

1 In the philosophy of mind, subjective denotes what is to be referred to the think- 
ing subject, the Ego ; objective what belongs to the object of thought, the Non-Ego. 
— It may be safe, perhaps, to say a few words in vindication of our employment of 
these terms. By the Greeks the word vTroKei/ievov was equivocally employed 
to express either the object of knowledge (the materia circa quam), or the subject 
of existence (the materia in qua). The exact distinction of subject and object was 
first made by the schoolmen ; and to the schoolmen the vulgar languages are prin- 
pally indebted for what precision and analytic subtilty they possess. These correla- 
tive terms correspond to the first and most important distinction in philosophy ; they 
embody the original antithesis in consciousness of self and not-self — a distinction 
which, in fact, involves the whole science of mind ; for psychology is nothing more 
than a determination of the subjective and the objective, in themselves, and in their 
reciprocal relations. Thus significant of the primary and most extensive analysis in 
philosophy, these terms, in their substantive and adjective forms, passed from the 
schools into the scientific language of Telesius, Campanella, Berigardus, Gassendi, 
Descartes, Spinosa, Leibnitz, Wolf, &c. Deprived of these terms, the Critical philo- 
sophy, indeed the whole philosophy of Germany, would be a blank. In this country, 
though familiarly employed in scientific language, even subsequently to the time of 
Locke, the adjective forms seem at length to have dropt out of the English tongue. 
That these words waxed obsolete was perhaps caused by the ambiguity which had 
gradually crept into the signification of the substantives. Object, besides its proper 
signification, came to be abusively applied to denote motive, end, final cause (a mean- 
ing not recognized by Johnson). This innovation was probably borrowed from the 
French, in whose language the word had been similarly corrupted after the commence- 
ment of the last century (Diet, de Trevoux, voce Objct.) Subject in English, as sujet 
in French, had been also perverted into a synonyme for object, taken in its proper 
meaning, and had thus returned to the original ambiguity of the corresponding term 
in Greek. It is probable that the logical application of the word {subject of attribution 
or predication) facilitated or occasioned this confusion. In using the terms, therefore, 
we think that an explanation, but no apology, is required. The distinction is of para- 
mount importance, and of infinite application, not only in philosophy proper, but in 
grammar, rhetoric, criticism, ethics, politics, jurisprudence, theology. It is adequately 
expressed by no other terms ; and if these did not already enjoy a prescriptive right, 
as denizens of the language, it can not be denied, that, as strictly analogical, the)' 
would be well entitled to sue out their naturalization. — [Not that these terms were 
formerly always employed in the same signification and contrast which they now ob- 
tain. For a history of these variations, see Dissertations on Reid, p. 806, sq. — Since 
this article was written, the words have in this country re-entered on their ancient 
rights ; they are now in common use.] 

2 [This line, which was quoted from memory, has, I find, in the original, "furens;" 



14 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

Founded by Fichte, but evolved by Schelling, this doctrine re- 
gards experience as unworthy of the name of science : because, 
as only of the phenomenal, the transitory, the dependent, it is 
only of that which, having no reality in itself, can not be estab- 
lished as a valid basis of certainty and knowledge. Philosophy 
must, therefore, either be abandoned, or we must be able to seize 
the One, the Absolute, the Unconditioned, immediately and in 
itself. And this they profess to do by a kind of intellectual 
vision. 1 In this act, reason, soaring not only above the world of 
sense, but beyond the sphere of personal consciousness, boldly 
places itself at the very centre of absolute being, with which it 
claims to be, in fact, identified ; and thence surveying existence 
in itself, and in its relations, unvails to us the nature of the 
Deity, and explains, from first to last, the derivation of all cre- 
ated things. 

M. Cousin is the apostle of Rationalism in France, and we are 
willing to admit that the doctrine could not have obtained a more 
eloquent or devoted advocate. For philosophy he has suffered ; 
to her ministry he has consecrated himself — devoted without 
reserve his life and labors. Neither has he approached the sanc- 
tuary with unwashed hands. The editor of Proclus and Des- 
cartes, the translator and interpreter of Plato, and the promised 
expositor of Kant, will not be accused of partiality in the choice 
of his pursuits ; while his two works, under the title of Philosoph- 
ical Fragments, bear ample evidence to the learning, elegance, 
and distinguished ability of their author. Taking him all in all, 

therefore translated — " Minds mad with reasoning — and fancy-fed." The author 
certainly had in his eye the "ratione insanias" of Terence. It is from a satire by 
Abraham Remi, who, in the former half of the seventeenth century, was Professor 
Royal of Eloquence in the University of Paris ; and it referred to the disputants of 
the Irish College in that illustrious school. The " Hibernian Logicians" were, indeed, 
long famed over the continent of Europe, for their acuteness, pugnacity, and barbar- 
ism ; as is recorded by Patin, Bayle, Le Sage, and many others. The learned Menage 
was so delighted with the verse, as to declare, that he would give his best benefice 
(and he enjoyed some fat ones) to have written it. It applies, not only with real, but 
with verbal, accuracy to the German Rationalists ; who in Philosophy (as Aristotle 
has it), "in making reason omnipotent, show their own impotence of reason," and in 
Theology (as Charles II. said of Isaac Vossius) — "believe every thing but the Bible."] 
1 "[Intellectuelle Atischauiing." — This is doubly wrong. — 1°, In grammatical rigor, 
the word in German ought to have been " intellectual.'' 2°, In philosophical con- 
sistency the Intuition ought not to have been called by its authors (Fichte and Schell- 
ing) in\ For, though this be, in fact, absolutely more correct, yet relatively 
it is a blunder; for the intuition, as intended by them, is of their higher faculty, the 
Reason ( Vcrnunft), and not of their lower, the Understanding or Intellect (Vcrstand). 
In modern German Philosophy, Vcrstand is always translated hylntellcclus ; and this 
again corresponds to Nour.] 



COUSIN'S PHILOSOPHY. 15 

in France M. Cousin stands alone : nor can we contemplate his 
character and accomplishments without the sincerest admiration, 
even while we dissent from the most prominent principle of his 
philosophy. The development of his system, in all its points, 
betrays the influence of German speculation on his opinions. 
His theory is not, however, a scheme of exclusive Rationalism ; 
on the contrary, the peculiarity of his doctrine consists in the 
attempt to combine the philosophy of experience, and the philo- 
sophy of pure reason, into one. The following is a concise state- 
ment of the fundamental positions of his system : 

Reason, or intelligence, has three integrant elements, affording 
three regulative principles, which at once constitute its nature, 
and govern its manifestations. These three ideas severally sup- 
pose each other, and, as inseparable, are equally essential and 
equally primitive. They are recognized by Aristotle and by Kant, 
in their several attempts to analyze intelligence into its princi- 
ples ; but though the categories of both philosophers comprise all 
the elements of thought, in neither list are these elements nat- 
urally co- arranged, or reduced to an ultimate simplicity. 

The first of these ideas, elements, or laws, though fundament- 
ally one, our author variously expresses, by the terms unity, 
identity, substance, absolute cause, the infinite, pure thought, 
&c. (we would briefly call it the unconditioned). The second, he 
denominates plurality, difference, phenomenon, relative cause, 
the finite, determined thought, &c. (we would style it the con- 
ditioned). These two elements are relative and correlative. The 
first, though absolute, is not conceived as existing absolutely in 
itself; it is conceived as an absolute cause, as a cause which can 
not but pass into operation ; in other words, the first element 
must manifest itself in the second. The two ideas are thus con- 
nected together as cause and effect ; each is only realized through 
the other; and this their connection, or correlation, is the third 
integrant element of intelligence. 

Reason, or intelligence, in which these ideas appear, and which, 
in fact, they make up, is not individual, is not ours, is not even 
human ; it is absolute, it is divine. What is personal to us, is our 
free and voluntary activity ; what is not free and not voluntary, 
is adventitious to man, and does not constitute an integrant part 
of his individuality. Intelligence is conversant with truth ; truth, 
as necessary and universal, is not the creature of my volition ; 
and reason, which, as the subject of truth, is also universal and 



16 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

necessary, is consequently impersonal. We see, therefore, by a 
light which is not ours, and reason is a revelation of Grod in 
man. The ideas of which we are conscious, belong not to us, 
but to absolute intelligence. They constitute, in truth, the very 
mode and manner of its existence. For consciousness is only 
possible under plurality and difference, and intelligence is only 
possible through consciousness. 

The divine nature is essentially comprehensible. For the three 
ideas constitute the nature of the Deity ; and the very nature 
of ideas is to be conceived. Grod, in fact, exists to us, only in so 
far as he is known ; and the degree of our knowledge must al- 
ways determine the measure of our faith. The relation of Grod 
to the universe is therefore manifest, and the creation easily un- 
derstood. To create, is not to make something out of nothing, 
for this is contradictory, but to originate from self. "We create 
so often as we exert our free causality, and something is created 
by us, when something begins to be by virtue of the free causal- 
ity which belongs to us. To create is, therefore, to cause, not 
with nothing, but with the very essence of our being — with our 
force, our will, our personality. The divine creation is of the 
same character. Grod, as he is a cause, is able to create ; as he 
is an absolute cause, he can not but create. In creating the 
universe, he does not draw it from nothing; he draws it from 
himself. The creation of the universe is thus necessary ; it is a 
manifestation of the Deity, but not the Deity absolutely in him- 
self ; it is Grod passing into activity, but not exhausted in the act. 

The universe created, the principles which determined the 
creation are found still to govern the worlds of matter and mind. 

Two ideas and their connection explain the intelligence of Grod; 
two laws in their counterpoise and correlation explain the mate- 
rial universe. The law of Expansion is the movement of unity to 
variety ; the law of Attraction is the return of variety to unity. 

In the world of mind the same analogy is apparent. The study 
of consciousness is psychology. Man is the microcosm of exist- 
ence; consciousness, within a narrow focus, concentrates a knowl- 
edge of the universe and of (rod ; psychology is thus the abstract 
of all science, human and divine. As in the external world, all 
phenomena may be reduced to the two great laws of Action and 
Reaction ; so, in the internal, all the facts of consciousness may 
be reduced to one fundamental fact, comprising in like manner 
two principles and their correlation ; and these principles are 



COUSIN'S PHILOSOPHY. 17 

again the One or the Infinite, the Many or the Finite and the 
Connection of the infinite and finite. 

In every act of consciousness we distinguish a Self or Ego, and 
something different from self, a Non-ego; each limited and modi- 
lied by the other. These, together, constitute the finite element. 
But at the same instant when we are conscious of these exist- 
ences, plural, relative, and contingent, we are conscious likewise 
of a superior unity in which they are contained, and by which 
they are explained ; — a unity absolute as they are conditioned, 
substantive as they are phenomenal, and an infinite cause as 
they are finite causes. This unity is God. The fact of conscious- 
ness is thus a complex phenomenon, comprehending three several 
terms : 1°, The idea of the Ego and Non-ego as Finite ; 2°, The 
idea of something else as Infinite ; and, 3°, The idea of the Rela- 
tion of the finite element to the infinite. These elements are 
revealed in themselves and in their mutual connection, in every 
act of primitive or Spontaneous consciousness. They can also be 
reviewed by Reflection in a voluntary act ; but here reflection 
distinguishes, it does not create. The three ideas, the three cate- 
gories of intelligence, are given in the original act of instinct- 
ive apperception, obscurely, indeed, and without contrast. Re- 
flection analyzes and discriminates the elements of this primary 
synthesis ; and as will is the condition of reflection, and will at 
the same time is personal, the categories, as obtained through re- 
flection, have consequently the appearance of being also personal 
and subjective. It was this personality of reflection that misled 
Kant : caused him to overlook or misinterpret the fact of sponta- 
neous consciousness ; to individualize intelligence ; and to collect 
under this personal reason all that is conceived by us as neces- 
sary and universal. But as, in the spontaneous intuition of rea- 
son, there is nothing voluntary, and consequently nothing person- 
al ; and as the truths which intelligence here discovers, come not 
from ourselves ; we have a right, up to a certain point, to impose 
these truths on others as revelations from on high : while, on the 
contrary, reflection being wholly personal, it would be absurd to 
impose on others, what is the fruit of our individual operations. 
Spontaneity is the principle of religion ; reflection of philosophy. 
Men agree in spontaneity ; they differ in reflection. The former 
is necessarily veracious ; the latter is naturally delusive. 

The condition of Reflection is separation : it illustrates by dis- 
tinguishing ; it considers the different elements apart, and while 

B 



18 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

it contemplates one, it necessarily throws the others out of view. 
Hence, not only the possibility, but the necessity, of error. The 
primitive unity, supposing no distinction, admits of no error ; 
reflection in discriminating the elements of thought, and in con- 
sidering one to the exclusion of others, occasions error, and a 
variety in error. He who exclusively contemplates the element 
of the Infinite, despises him who is occupied with the idea of the 
Finite ; and vice versa. It is the wayward development of the 
various elements of intelligence, which determines the imperfec- 
tions and varieties of individual character. Men under this par- 
tial and exclusive development, are but fragments of that hu- 
manity which can only be fully realized in the harmonious evo- 
lution of all its principles. What Reflection is to the individual, 
History is to the human race. The difference of an epoch con- 
sists exclusively in the partial development of some one element 
of intelligence in a prominent portion of mankind ; and as there 
are only three such elements, so there are only three grand epochs 
in the history of man. 

A knowledge of the elements of reason, of their relations and 
of their laws, constitutes not merely Philosophy, but is the con- 
dition of a History of Philosophy. The history of human reason, 
or the history of philosophy, must be rational and philosophic. 
It must be philosophy itself, with all its elements, in all their 
relations, and under all their laws, represented in striking char- 
acters by the hands of time and of history, in the manifested pro- 
gress of the human mind. The discovery and enumeration of 
all the elements of intelligence enable us to survey the progress 
of speculation from the loftiest vantage ground ; it reveals to us 
the laws by which the development of reflection or philosophy is 
determined ; and it supplies us with a canon by which the ap- 
proximation of the different systems to the truth may be finally 
ascertained. And what are the results ? Sensualism, Idealism, 
Skepticism, Mysticism, are all partial and exclusive views of the 
elements of intelligence. But each is false only as it is incom- 
plete. They are all true in what they affirm ; all erroneous in 
what they deny. Though hitherto opposed, they are, consequent- 
ly, not incapable of coalition ; and, in fact, can only obtain their 
consummation in a powerful Eclecticism — a system which shall 
comprehend them all. This Eclecticism is realized in the doc- 
trine previously developed ; and the possibility of such a catholic 
philosophy was first afforded by the discovery of M. Cousin, made 



COUSIN'S PHILOSOPHY. 19 

so long ago as the year 1817 — "that consciousness contained 
many more phenomena than had previously been suspected." 

The present course is at once an exposition of these principles, 
as a true theory of philosophy, and an illustration of the mode in 
which this theory is to he applied, as a rule of criticism in the 
history of philosophical opinion. As the justice of the application 
must he always subordinate to the truth of the principle, we shall 
confine ourselves exclusively to a consideration of M. Cousin's sys- 
tem, viewed absolutely in itself. This, indeed, we are afraid will 
prove comparatively irksome ; and, therefore, solicit indulgence, 
not only for the unpopular nature of the discussion, but for the 
employment of language which, from the total neglect of these 
speculations in Britain, will necessarily appear abstruse — not 
merely to the general reader. 

Now, it is manifest that the whole doctrine of M. Cousin is 
involved in the proposition — that the Unconditioned, the Abso- 
lute, the Infinite, is immediately known in consciousness, and 
this by difference, plurality, and relation. The unconditioned, 
as an original element of knowledge, is the generative principle 
of his system, but common to him with others ; whereas, the 
mode in which the possibility of this knowledge is explained, 
affords its discriminating peculiarity. The other positions of his 
theory, as deduced from this assumption, may indeed be disputed, 
even if the antecedent be allowed ; but this assumption disproved, 
every consequent in his theory is therewith annihilated. The 
recognition of the absolute as a constitutive principle of intelli- 
gence, our author regards as at once the condition and the end 
of philosophy ; and it is on the discovery of this principle in the 
fact of consciousness, that he vindicates to himself the glory of 
being the founder of the new eclectic, or the one catholic philos- 
ophy. The determination of this cardinal point will thus briefly 
satisfy us touching the claim and character of the system. To 
explain the nature of the problem itself, and the sufficiency of 
the solution propounded by M. Cousin, it is necessary to premise 
a statement of the opinions which may be entertained regarding 
the Unconditioned, as an immediate object of knowledge and of 
thought. 

These opinions may be reduced to four. — 1°, The Uncondi- 
tioned is incognizable and inconceivable ; its notion being only 
negative of the conditioned, which last can alone be positively 
known or conceived.— 2°, It is not an object of knowledge ; but 



20 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

its notion, as a regulative principle of the mind itself, is more 
than a mere negation of the conditioned. — 3°, It is cognizable, 
but not conceivable ; it can be known by a sinking back into 
identity with the absolute, but is incomprehensible by conscious- 
ness and reflection, which are only of the relative and the differ- 
ent — 4°, It is cognizable and conceivable by consciousness and 
reflection, under relation, difference, and plurality. 

The first of these opinions we regard as true ; the second is 
held by Kant; the third by Schelling; 1 and the last by our author. 

1. In our opinion, the mind can conceive, and, consequently, 
can know, only the limited, and the conditionally limited. The 
unconditionally unlimited, or the Infinite, the unconditionally 
limited, or the Absolute, can not positively be construed to the 
mind ; they can be conceived, only by a thinking away from, or 
abstraction of, those very conditions under which thought itself 
is realized ; consequently, the notion of the Unconditioned is only 
negative — negative of the conceivable itself. For example, on the 
one hand we can positively conceive, neither an absolute whole, 
that is, a whole so great, that we can not also conceive it as a 
relative part of a still greater whole ; nor an absolute part, that 
is, a part so small, that we can not also conceive it as a relative 
whole, divisible into smaller parts. On the other hand, we can 
not positively represent, or realize, or construe to the mind (as 
here understanding and imagination coincide), 3 an infinite whole, 
for this could only be done by the infinite synthesis in thought 
of finite wholes, which would itself require an infinite time for 
its accomplishment ; nor, for the same reason, can we follow out 
in thought an infinite divisibility of parts. The result is the same, 
whether we apply the process to limitation in space, in time, or 
in degree. The unconditional negation, and the unconditional 

1 [But not alone by SchelHng. For of previous philosophers, several held substan- 
tially the same doctrine. Thus Plotinus : — "Ecm be to bv ivepyeia' paKkov be ra 
ap(pti> ev. Mia pev ovv (pvcris; to -re bv, o re vois' bio Kai ra ovra. Kai 17 tov 
ovros ivepyeia Kai 6 vov? 6 toiovtos ' k<A al ovtch vor)aeis, to eibos, Kai 17 popcprj tov 
ovtos, Kai tj ivepyeia ' k. t. A. (Enn. V. 1. ix. c. 8.)] 

2 [The Understanding, thought proper, notion, concept, &c, may coincide or not 
with Imagination, representation proper, image, &c. The two faculties do not coin- 
cide in a general notion ; for we can not represent Man or Horse in an actual image 
without individualizing the universal ; and thus contradiction emerges. But in the 
individual, say Socrates or Bucephalus, they do coincide ; for I see no valid ground 
why we should not think, in the strict sense of the word, or conceive the individuals 
which we represent. In like manner there is no mutual contradiction between the 
image and the concept of the Infinite or Absolute, if these be otherwise possible ; for 
there is not necessarily involved the incompatibility of the one act of cognition with 
the other.] 



REVIEWER'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 21 

affirmation of limitation ; in other words, the infinite and the 
absolute, properly so called, 1 are thus equally inconceivable to us. 
As the conditionally limited (which we may briefly call the 
conditioned) is thus the only possible object of knowledge and of 
positive thought — thought necessarily supposes conditions. To 
think is to condition; and conditional limitation is the funda- 
mental law of the possibility of thought. For, as the grayhound 
can not outstrip his shadow, nor (by a more appropriate simile) 
the eagle outsoar the atmosphere in which he floats, and by which 
alone he may be supported ; so the mind can not transcend that 
sphere of limitation, within and through which exclusively the 
possibility of thought is realized. Thought is only of the con- 
ditioned; because, as we have said, to think is simply to condi- 
tion. The absolute is conceived merely by a negation of conceiv- 
ability ; and all that we know, is only known as 

" won from the void and formless infinite." 



How, indeed, it could ever be doubted that thought is only of the 
conditioned, may well be deemed a matter of the profoundest 
admiration. Thought can not transcend consciousness ; con- 
sciousness is only possible under the antithesis of a subject and 
object of thought, known only in correlation, and mutually limit- 
ing each other ; while, independently of this, all that we know 

1 It is right to observe, that though we are of opinion that the terms, Infinite and 
Absolute, and Unconditioned, ought not to be confounded, and accurately distinguish 
them in the statement of our own view ; yet, in speaking of the doctrines of those by 
whom ' they are indifferently employed, we have not thought it necessary, or rather 
we have found it impossible, to adhere to the distinction. The Unconditioned in our 
use of language denotes the genus of which the Infinite and Absolute are the species. 

[The term Absolute is of a twofold (if not threefold) ambiguity, corresponding to 
the double (or treble) signification of the word in Latin. 

1. Absolutum means what is freed or loosed; in which sense the Absolute will be 
what is aloof from relation, comparison, limitation, condition, dependence, &c, and 
thus is tantamount to r6 cmokvrov of the lower Greeks. In this meaning the Abso- 
lute is not opposed to the Infinite. 

Absolutum means finished, perfected, completed; in which sense the Absolute will 
be what is out of relation, &c., as finished, perfect, complete, total, and thus corre- 
sponds to to b"kov and to re\eiov of Aristotle. In this acceptation — and it is that in 
which for myself I exclusively use it — the Absolute is diametrically opposed to, is 
contradictory of, the Infinite. 

Besides these two meanings, there is to be noticed the use of the word, for the 
most part in its adverbial form ; — absolutely (absolute) in the sense of simply, simpli- 
citer, (air\£>f), that is, considered in and for itself — considered not in relation. This 
holds a similar analogy to the two former meanings of Absolute, which the Indefinite 
(to aopio-Tov) does to the Infinite (to ajreipov). It is subjective as they are objective ; 
it is in our thought as they are in their own existence. This application is to be dis- 
counted, as here irrelevant.] 



22 COUSIN'S PHILOSOPHY. 

either of subject or object, either of mind or matter, is only a 
knowledge in each of the particular, of the plural, of the differ- 
ent, of the modified, of the phenomenal. We admit that the 
consequence of this doctrine is — that philosophy, if viewed as 
more than a science of the conditioned, is impossible. Departing 
from the particular, we admit, that we can never, in our highest 
generalizations, rise above the finite ; that our knowledge, whether 
of mind or matter, can be nothing more than a knowledge of the 
relative manifestations of an existence, which in itself it is our 
highest wisdom to recognize as beyond the reach of philosophy — 
in the language of St. Austin — " cognoscendo ignorari, et igno- 
rando cognosciP 

The conditioned is the mean between two extremes — two in- 
conditionates, exclusive of each other, neither of which can be 
conceived as possible, but of which, on the principles of contra- 
diction and excluded middle, one must be admitted as necessary. 
On this opinion, therefore, reason is shown to be weak, but not 
deceitful. The mind is not represented as conceiving two propo- 
sitions subversive of each other, as equally possible ; but only, as 
unable to understand as possible, either of two extremes ; one of 
which, however, on the ground of their mutual repugnance, it is 
compelled to recognize as true. We are thus taught the salutary 
lesson, that the capacity of thought is not to be constituted into 
the measure of existence ; and are warned from recognizing the do- 
main of our knowledge as necessarily co-extensive with the horizon 
of our faith. And by a wonderful revelation, we are thus, in the 
very consciousness of our inability to conceive aught above the rela- 
tive and finite, inspired with a belief in the existence of something 
unconditioned beyond the sphere of all comprehensible reality. 1 

2. The second opinion, that of Kant, is fundamentally the same 
as the preceding. Metaphysic, strictly so denominated, the phi- 
losophy of Existence, is virtually the doctrine of the unconditioned. 
From Xenophanes to Leibnitz, the infinite, the absolute, the un- 
conditioned, formed the highest principle of speculation; but from 

1 [True, therefore, are the declarations of a pious philosophy: "A God understood 
would be no God at all ;" — " To think that God is, as we can think him to be, is 
blasphemy." — The Divinity, in a certain sense, is revealed; in a certain sense is 
concealed : He is at once known and unknown. But the last and highest consecra- 
tion of all true religion, must be an altar — 'Ayvaxrra 0ec3 — " To the unknown and 
unknoivablc God." In this consummation, nature and revelation, paganism and Chris- 
tianity, are at one : and from either source the testimonies are so numerous that I 
must refrain from quoting any. — Am I wrong in thinking, that M. Cousin would not 
repudiate this doctrine 1] 



KANT'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 23 

the dawn of philosophy in the school of Elea until the rise of the 
Kantian philosophy, no serious attempt was made to investigate 
the nature and origin of this notion (or notions) as a psychological 
phenomenon. Before Kant, philosophy was rather a deduction 
from principles, than an inquiry concerning principles themselves. 
At the head of every system a cognition figured, which the phi- 
losopher assumed in conformity to his views ; but it was rarely 
considered necessary, and more rarely attempted, to ascertain the 
genesis, and determine the domain, of this notion or judgment, 
previous to application. In his first Critique, Kant undertakes 
a regular survey of consciousness. He professes to analyze the 
conditions of human knowledge — to mete out its limits — to in- 
dicate its point of departure — and to determine its possibility. 
That Kant accomplished much, it would be prejudice to deny ; 
nor is his service to philosophy the less, that his success has been 
more decided in the subversion of error than in the establishment 
of truth. The result of his examination was the abolition of the 
metaphysical sciences — of rational psychology, ontology, specula- 
tive theology, &c, as founded on mere petitiones principiorum. 
Existence is revealed to us only under specific modifications, and 
these are known only under the conditions of our faculties of 
knowledge. " Things in themselves," Matter, Mind, Grod — all, 
in short, that is not finite, relative, and phenomenal, as bearing 
no analogy to our faculties, is beyond the verge of our knowledge. 
Philosophy was thus restricted to the observation and analysis 
of the phenomena of consciousness ; and what is not explicitly 
or implicitly given in a fact of consciousness, is condemned, as 
transcending the sphere of a legitimate speculation. A knowl- 
edge of the unconditioned is declared impossible ; either immedi- 
ately, as a notion, or mediately, as an inference. A demonstra- 
tion of the absolute from the relative is logically absurd ; as in 
such a syllogism we must collect in the conclusion what is not 
distributed in the premises : And an immediate knowledge of the 
unconditioned is equally impossible. — But here we think his 
reasoning complicated, and his reduction incomplete. We must 
explain ourselves. 

While we regard as conclusive, Kant's analysis of Time and 
Space into conditions of thought, we can not help viewing his 
deduction of the " Categories of Understanding," and the " Ideas 
of speculative Reason," as the work of a great but perverse inge- 
nuity. The categories of understanding are merely subordinate 



24 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED- 

forms of the conditioned. Why not, therefore, generalize the 
Conditioned — Existence conditioned, as the supreme category, or 
categories, of thought ? — and if it were necessary to analyze this 
form into its subaltern applications, why not develop these im- 
mediately out of the generic principle, instead of preposterously, 
and by a forced and partial analogy, deducing the laws of the 
understanding from a questionable division of logical proposi- 
tions ? "Why distinguish Reason ( Vernnnft) from Understanding 
(Ver stand), simply on the ground that the former is conversant 
about, or rather tends toward, the unconditioned ; when it is suf- 
ficiently apparent, that the unconditioned is conceived only as 
the negation of the conditioned, and also that the conception of 
contradictories is one ? In the Kantian philosophy both faculties 
perform the same function, both' seek the one in the many ; — the 
Idea (Idee) is only the Concept (Begriff) sublimated into the in- 
conceivable ; Reason only the Understanding which has "over- 
leaped itself." Kant has clearly shown, that the idea of the 
unconditioned can have no objective reality — that it conveys no 
knowledge — and that it involves the most insoluble contradic- 
tions. But he ought to have shown that the unconditioned had 
no objective application, because it had, in fact, no subjective 
affirmation — that it afforded no real knowledge, because it con- 
tained nothing even conceivable — and that it is self-contradictory, 
because it is not a notion, either simple or positive, but only a 
fasciculus of negations — negations of the conditioned in its oppo- 
site extremes, and bound together merely by the aid of language 
and their common character of incomprehensibility. And while 
he appropriated Reason as a specific faculty to take cognizance 
of these negations, hypostatized as positive, under the Platonic 
name of Ideas ; so also, as a pendant to his deduction of the 
categories of Understanding from a logical division of proposi- 
tions, he deduced the classification and number of these ideas of 
Reason from a logical division of syllogisms. — Kant thus stands 
intermediate between those who view the notion of the absolute 
as the instinctive affirmation of an encentric intuition, and those 
who regard it as the factitious negative of an eccentric general- 
ization. 

"Were we to adopt from the Critical Philosophy the idea of an- 
alyzing thought into its fundamental conditions, and were we to 
carry the reduction of Kant to what we think its ultimate sim- 
plicity, we would discriminate thought into positive and nega- 



KANT'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 25 

tive, according as it is conversant about the conditioned or un- 
conditioned. This, however, would constitute a logical, not a 
psychological distinction ; as positive and negative in thought 
are known at once, and by the same intellectual act. The twelve 
Categories of the Understanding would be thus included under 
the former ; the three Ideas of Reason under the latter ; and to 
this intent the contrast between understanding and reason would 
disappear. Finally, rejecting the arbitrary limitation of time 
and space to the sphere of sense, we would express under the 
formula of — The Conditioned in Time and Space — a definition 
of the conceivable, and an enumeration of the three categories 
of thought. 1 

The imperfection and partiality of Kant's analysis are betrayed 
in its consequences. His doctrine leads to absolute skepticism. 
Speculative reason, on Kant's own admission, is an organ of mere 
delusion. The idea of the unconditioned, about which it is con- 
versant, is shown to involve insoluble contradictions, and yet to 
be the legitimate product of intelligence. Hume has well ob- 
served, " that it matters not whether we possess a false reason, 
or no reason at all." If " the light that leads astray, be light 
from heaven," what are we to believe ? If our intellectual na- 
ture be perfidious in one revelation, it must be presumed deceit- 
ful in all ; nor is it possible for Kant to establish the existence 
of Grod, Freewill, and Immortality, on the presumed veracity of 
reason, in a practical relation, after having himself demonstrated 
its mendacity in a speculative. 

Kant had annihilated the older metaphysic, but the germ of a 
more visionary doctrine of the absolute, than any of those re- 
futed, was contained in the bosom of his own philosophy. He 
had slain the body, but had not exorcised the spectre of the ab- 
solute ; and this spectre has continued to haunt the schools of 
Grermany even to the present day. The philosophers were not 
content to abandon their metaphysic ; to limit philosophy to an 
observation of phenomena, and to the generalization of these phe- 
nomena into laws. The theories of Bouterweck (in his earlier 
works), of Bardili, of Reinhold, of Fichte, of Schelling, of Hegel, 
and of sundry others, are just so many endeavors, of greater or 
of less ability, to fix the absolute as a positive in knowledge ; 
but the absolute, like the water in the sieves of the Danaides, 

1 [See Appendix I. for a more matured view of these categories or conditions of 
thought.] 



26 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

has always hitherto run through as a negative into the abyss of 
nothing. 

3. Of these theories, that of Schelling is the only one in re- 
gard to which it is now necessary to say any thing. His opinion 
constitutes the third of those enumerated touching the knowl- 
edge of the absolute ; and the following is a brief statement of 
its principal positions : 

While the lower sciences are of the relative and conditioned, 
Philosophy, as the science of sciences, must be of the absolute 
— the unconditioned. Philosophy, therefore, supposes a science 
of the absolute. Is the absolute beyond our knowledge ? — then 
is philosophy itself impossible. 

But how, it is objected, can the absolute be known ? The ab- 
solute, as unconditioned, identical, and one, can not be cognized 
under conditions, by difference and plurality. It can not, there- 
fore, be known, if the subject of knowledge be distinguished 
from the object of knowledge ; in a knowledge of the absolute, 
existence and knowledge must be identical; the absolute can 
only be known, if adequately known, and it can only be ade- 
quately known, by the absolute itself. But is this possible? 
We are wholly ignorant of existence in itself: — the mind knows 
nothing, except in parts, by quality, and difference, and relation ; 
consciousness supposes the subject contradistinguished from the 
object of thought ; the abstraction of this contrast is a negation 
of consciousness ; and the negation of consciousness is the anni- 
hilation of thought itself. The alternative is therefore unavoid- 
able : either finding the absolute, we lose ourselves ; or retaining 
self and individual consciousness, we do not reach the absolute. 

All this Schelling frankly admits. He admits that a knowl- 
edge of the absolute is impossible, in personality and conscious- 
ness : he admits that, as the understanding knows, and can know, 
only by consciousness, and consciousness only by difference, we, 
as conscious and understanding, can apprehend, can conceive 
only the conditioned ; and he admits that, only if man be him- 
self the infinite, can the infinite be known by him : 

" Nee sentire Deum, nisi qui pars ipse Deorum est ; " l 
(" None can feel God, who shares not in the Godhead.") 

But Schelling contends that there is a capacity of knowledge 

• [This line is from Manilius. But as a statement of Schelling's doctrine ]t is in- 
adequate ; for on his doctrine the deity can be known only if fully known, and a full 
knowledge of deity is possible only to the absolute deity — that is, not to a sharer in 



SCHELLING'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 27 

above consciousness, and higher than the understanding, and that 
this knowledge is competent to human reason, as identical with 
the Absolute itself. In this act of knowledge, which, after Fichte, 
he calls the Intellectual Intuition, there exists no distinction of 
subject and object — no contrast of knowledge and existence ; all 
difference is lost in absolute indifference — all plurality in abso- 
lute unity. The Intuition itself — Reason — and the Absolute are 
identified. The absolute exists only as known by reason, and 
reason knows only as being itself the absolute. 
This act (act !) is necessarily ineffable : 

" The vision and the faculty divine," 

to be known, must be experienced. It can not be conceived by 
the understanding, because beyond its sphere ; it can not be de- 
scribed, because its essence is identity, and all description sup- 
poses discrimination. To those who are unable to rise beyond a 
philosophy of reflection, Schelling candidly allows that the doc- 
trine of the absolute can appear only a series of contradictions ; 
and he has at least the negative merit of having clearly exposed 
the impossibility of a philosophy of the unconditioned, as found- 
ed on a knowledge by difference, if he utterly fails in positively 
proving the possibility of such a philosophy, as founded on a 

the Godhead. Manilius has likewise another (poetically) laudable line, of a similar, 
though less exceptionable, purport : 

" Exemplumque Dei quisque est in imagine parva ;" 
(" Each is himself a miniature of God") 

For we should not recoil to the opposite extreme ; and, though man be not identical 
with the Deity, still is he " created in the image of God." It is, indeed, only through 
an analogy of the human with the Divine nature, that we are percipient and recipient 
of Divinity. As St. Prosper has it : — " Nemo possidet Deum, nisi qui possidetur a 
Deo." — So Seneca: — "In unoquoque virorum bonorum habitat Deus." — So Plotinus : 
— " Virtue tending to consummation, and irradicated in the soul by moral wisdom, 
reveals a God ; but a God destitute of true virtue is an empty name." — So Jacobi: — 
■■ From the enjoyment of virtue springs the idea of a virtuous ; from the enjoyment 
of freedom, the idea of a free ; from the enjoyment of life, the idea of a living ; from 
the enjoyment of the divine, the idea of a godlike — and of a God." — So Goethe : — 

" War nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, 
Wie konnten wir das Licht erblicken ? 
Lebt' nicht in uns des Gottes eig'ne Kraft, 
Wie konnte uns das Gottliches entzucken?" 

So Kant and many others. (Thus morality and religion, necessity and atheism, 
rationally go together.) — The Platonists and Fathers have indeed finely said, that 
"God is the soul of the soul, as the soul is the soul of the body." 

" Vita Animae Deus est ; hsc Corporis. Hac fugiente, 
Solvitur hoc ; perit haec, destituente Deo." 

These verses are preserved to us from an ancient poet by John of Salisbury, and they 
denote the comparison of which Buchanan has made so admirable a use in his Calvini 
Epicediwm.] 



28 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

knowledge in identity, through an absorption into, and vision of, 
the absolute. 

Out of Laputa or the Empire it would be idle to enter into an 
articulate refutation of a theory, which founds philosophy on the 
annihilation of consciousness, and on the identification of the un- 
conscious philosopher with Grod. The intuition of the absolute is 
manifestly the work of an arbitrary abstraction, and of a self- 
delusive imagination. To reach the point of indifference — by 
abstraction we annihilate the object, and by abstraction we 
annihilate the subject, of consciousness. But what remains ? — 
Nothing. " Nil conscimus nobis." We then hypostatize the 
zero ; we baptize it with the name of Absolute ; and conceit our- 
selves that we contemplate absolute existence, when we only spe- 
culate absolute privation. 1 This truth has been indeed virtually 
confessed by the two most distinguished followers of Schelling. 
Hegel at last abandons the intuition, and regards "pure or unde- 
termined existence" as convertible with "pure nothing;" while 
Oken, if he adhere to the intuition, intrepidly identifies the Deity 
or Absolute with zero. Grod, he makes the Nothing, the Nothing, 
he makes Grod ; 

And Naught, 
Is ev'rything, and ev'rything is Naught." 2 

1 [The Infinite and Absolute are only the names of two counter imbecilities of the 
human mind, transmuted into properties of the nature of things — of two subjective 
negations, converted into objective affirmations. We tire ourselves, either in adding 
to, or in taking from. Some, more reasonably, call the thing unfinishable — infinite ; 
others, less rationally, call it finished — absolute. But in both cases, the metastasis is 
in itself irrational. Not, however, in the highest degree : for the subjective contra- 
dictories were not at first objectified by the same philosophers ; and it is the crowning 
irrationality of the Infmito-absolutists, that they have not merely accepted as objective 
what is only subjective, but quietly assumed as the same, what are not only different 
but conflictive, not only conflictive, but repugnant. Seneca (Ep. 118) has given the 
true genealogy of the original fictions ; but at his time the consummative union of the 
two had not been attempted. "Ubi animus aliquid diu protulit, et magnitudinem ejus 
sequendo lassatus est, infinitum coepit vocari. Eodem modo, aliquid difficulteiisecari 
cogitavimus, novissime, crescente difficultate, insecabilc inventum est."] 

2 [From the Rejected Addresses. Their ingenious authors have embodied a jest in 
the very words by which Oken, in sober seriousness, propounds the first and greatest 
of philosophical truths. Jacobi (or Neebl) might well say, that, in reading this last 
consummation of German speculation, he did not know whether he were standing on 
his head or his feet. The book in which Oken so ingeniously deduces the All from 
the Nothing, has, I see, been lately translated into English, and published by the Ray 
Society (I think). The statement of the paradox is, indeed, somewhat softened in 
the second edition, from which, I presume, the version is made, Not that Oken and 
Hegel are original even in the absurdity. For as Varro right truly said : — " Nihil tam 
absurde dici potest, quod non dicatur ab abliquo philosophorum ;" so the Intuition of 
God = the Absolute = the Nothing, we find asserted by the lower Platonists, by the 
Buddhists, and by Jacob Boehme.] 



SCHILLING'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 29 

Nor does the negative chimera prove less fruitful than the posi- 
tive ; for Schelling has found it as difficult to evolve the one into 
the many, as his disciples to deduce the universe and its contents 
from the first self-affirmation of the "primordial Nothing." 

"Miri homines ! Nihil esse aliquid statuantve negentve ; 
Quodque negant statuunt, quod statuuntque negant." 

To Schelling, indeed, it has been impossible, without gratuit- 
ous and even contradictory assumptions, to explain the deduction 
of the finite from the infinite. By no salto mortale has he been 
able to clear the magic circle in which he had enclosed himself. 
Unable to connect the unconditioned and the conditioned by any 
natural correlation, he has variously attempted to account for the 
phenomenon of the universe, either by imposing a necessity of 
self-manifestation on the absolute, i. e. by conditioning the un- 
conditioned ; or by postulating a fall of the finite from the infinite, 
i, e. by begging the very fact which his hypothesis professed its 
exclusive ability to explain. — The veil of Tsis is thus still un- 
withdrawn j 1 and the question proposed by Orpheus at the dawn 
of speculation will probably remain unanswered at its setting : 

"Ilwr be [xoi ev ti ra ttclvt eorcu kcu ^copiy eKacnov; 
(" How can I think each, separate, and all, one ]") 

In like manner, annihilating consciousness in order to recon- 
struct it, Schelling has never yet been able to connect the facul- 
ties conversant about the conditioned, with the faculty of absolute 
knowledge. One simple objection strikes us as decisive, although 
we do not remember to have seen it alleged. "We awaken," 
says Schelling, "from the Intellectual Intuition as from a state 
of death ; we awaken by Reflection, that is, through a compul- 
sory return to ourselves." 2 We can not, at the same moment, be 
in the intellectual intuition and in common consciousness ; we 
must therefore be able to connect them by an act of memory — 
of recollection. But how can there be a remembrance of the ab- 
solute and its intuition ? As out of time, and space, and relation, 
and difference, it is admitted that the absolute can not be con- 
strued to the understanding ? But as remembrance is only pos- 

1 [Isis appears as the iEgypto-Grecian symbol of the Unconditioned. Clcris — 'lata 
— Ov<TLa : "lereiov — yvaxns tov ovto?. Plut. I. et 0.) In the temple of Athene-Isis, 
at Sais, on the fane there stood this sublime inscription : 

I AM ALL THAT WAS, AND IS, AND SHALL BE ; 
N0E MY VEIL, HAS IT BEEN WITHDRAWN BY MORTAL. 

(" Eyco elfii irav to yeyovos, nal ov, kcu ifrofievov, kcu tov iyibv ireTrkov ouSet'y 7rco 
6vt]t6s 07reKaXi)^e.")] 

2 In Fichte's u. Niethhammer's Phil. Journ. vol. iii. p. 214. 



30 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

sible under the conditions of the understanding, it is consequently 
impossible to remember any thing anterior to the moment when 
we awaken into consciousness ; and the clairvoyance of the ab- 
solute, even granting its reality, is thus, after the crisis, as if it 
had never been. We defy all solution of this objection. 

4. What has now been stated may in some degree enable the 
reader to apprehend the relations in which our author stands, 
both to those who deny and to those who admit a knowledge of 
the absolute. If we compare the philosophy of Cousin with the 
philosophy of Schelling, we at once perceive that the former is a 
disciple, though by no means a servile disciple of the latter. The 
scholar, though enamored with his master's system as a whole, 
is sufficiently aware of the two insuperable difficulties of that 
theory. He saw, that if he pitched the absolute so high, it was 
impossible to deduce from it the relative ; and he felt, probably, 
that the Intellectual Intuition — a stumbling-block to himself 
— would be arrant foolishness in the eyes of his countrymen. 
Cousin and Schelling agree, that as philosophy is the science of 
the unconditioned, the unconditioned must be within the com- 
pass of science. They agree that the unconditioned is known, 
and immediately known : and they agree that intelligence, as 
competent to the unconditioned, is impersonal, infinite, divine. 
But while they coincide in the fact of the absolute, as known, 
they are diametrically opposed as to the mode in which they at- 
tempt to realize this knowledge; each regarding, as the climax of 
contradiction, the manner in which the other endeavors to bring 
human reason and the absolute into proportion. According to 
Schelling, Cousin's absolute is only a relative ; according to Cou- 
sin, Schelling's knowledge of the absolute is a negation of thought 
itself. Cousin declares the condition of all knowledge to be 
plurality and difference ; and Schelling, that the condition, under 
which alone a knowledge of the absolute becomes possible, is in- 
difference and unity. The one thus denies a notion of the abso- 
lute to consciousness ; while the other affirms that consciousness 
is implied in every act of intelligence. Truly, we must view each 
as triumphant over the other ; and the result of this mutual neu- 
tralization is — that the absolute, of which both assert a knowl- 
edge, is for us incognizable. 1 



1 [" Quod genus hoc pugnte, qua victor victus uterque !" 
is still further exhibited in the mutual refutation of the two great apostles of the Ab 
solute, in Germany — Schelling and Hegel. They were early friends — contempora- 



COUSIN'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 31 

In these circumstances, we might expect our author to have 
stated the difficulties to which his theory was exposed on the 
one side and on the other ; and to have endeavored to obviate the 
objections, both of his brother-absolutists, and of those who alto- 
gether deny a philosophy of the unconditioned. This he has not 
done. The possibility of reducing the notion of the absolute to a 
negative conception is never once contemplated ; and if one or 
two allusions (not always, perhaps, correct) are made to his doc- 
trine, the name of Schelling does not occur, as we recollect, in the 
whole compass of these lectures. Difficulties, by which either the 
doctrine of the absolute in general, or his own particular modifica- 
tion of that doctrine, may be assailed, are either avoided, or solved 
only by still greater. Assertion is substituted for proof; facts of 
consciousness are alleged, which consciousness never knew ; and 
paradoxes, that baffle argument, are promulgated as intuitive 
truths, above the necessity of confirmation. With every feeling 
of respect for M. Cousin as a man of learning and genius, we 
must regard the grounds on which he endeavors to establish his 
doctrine as assumptive, inconsequent, and erroneous. In vindi- 
cating the truth of this statement, we shall attempt to show : in 
the first place, that M. Cousin is at fault in all the authorities he 
quotes in favor of the opinion, that the absolute, infinite, uncon- 
ditioned, is a primitive notion, cognizable by our intellect; in the 
second, that his argument, to prove the correality of his three 

ries at the same university — occupiers of the same bursal room (college chums)— 
Hegel, somewhat the elder man, was somewhat the younger philosopher — and they 
were joint-editors of the journal in which their then common doctrine was at first 
promulgated. So far all was in unison ; but now they separated, locally and in opin- 
ion. Both, indeed, stuck to the Absolute, but each regarded the way in which the 
other professed to reach it, as absurd. Hegel derided the Intellectual Intuition of 
Schelling, as a poetical play of fancy ; Schelling derided the Dialectic of Hegel, as a 
logical play with words. Both, I conceive, were right ; but neither fully right. If 
Schelling's Intellectual Intuition were poetical, it was a poetry transcending, in fact 
abolishing, human imagination. If Hegel's Dialectic were logical, it was a logic out- 
raging that science and the conditions of thought itself. Hegel's whole philosophy 
is, indeed, founded on two errors ; — on a mistake in logic, and on a violation of logic. 
In his dream of disproving the law of Excluded Middle (between two Contradictories), 
he inconceivably mistakes Contraries for Contradictories ; and in positing pure or ab- 
solute existence as a mental datum, immediate, intuitive, and above proof (though, in 
truth, this be palpably a mere relative gained by a process of abstraction), he not only 
mistakes the fact, but violates the logical law which prohibits us to assume the prin- 
ciple which it behoves us to prove. On these two fundamental errors rests Hegel's 
dialectic ; and Hegel's dialectic is the ladder by which he attempts to scale the Abso- 
lute. The peculiar doctrine of these two illustrious thinkers is thus to me only an- 
other manifestation of an occurrence of the commonest in human speculation ; it is 
only a sophism of relative self-love, victorious over the absolute love of truth : "Quod 
volunt sapiunt, et nolunt sapere qua) vera sunt."] 



32 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

ideas, proves directly the reverse ; in the third, that the condi- 
tions under which alone he allows intelligence to be possible, 
necessarily exclude the possibility of a knowledge, not to say a 
conception, of the absolute ; and in the fourth, that the absolute, 
as defined by him, is only a relative and a conditioned. 

In the first place, then, M. Cousin supposes that Aristotle and 
Kant, in their several categories, equally proposed an analysis 
of the constituent elements of intelligence ; and he also supposes 
that each, like himself, recognized among these elements the no- 
tion of the infinite, absolute, unconditioned. In both these sup- 
positions we think him wrong. 

It is a serious error in a historian of philosophy to imagine 
that, in his scheme of categories, Aristotle proposed, like Kant, 
"an analysis of the elements of human reason." It is just, how- 
ever, to mention, that in this mistake M. Cousin has been pre- 
ceded by Kant himself. But the ends proposed by the two phi- 
losophers were different, even opposed. In their several tables : 
Aristotle attempted a synthesis of things in their multiplicity — - 
a classification of objects real, but in relation to thought; — Kant, 
an analysis of mind in its unity — a dissection of thought, pure, 
but in relation to its objects. The predicaments of Aristotle are 
thus objective, of things as understood ; those of Kant subjective, 
of the mind as understanding. The former are results -a poste- 
riori — the creations of abstraction and generalization ; the latter, 
anticipations a priori — the conditions of those acts themselves. 
It is true, that as the one scheme exhibits the unity of thought 
diverging into plurality, in appliance to its objects, and the other, 
exhibits the multiplicity of these objects converging toward unity 
by a collective determination of the mind ; while, at the same 
time, language usually confounds the subjective and objective un- 
der a common term ; — it is certainly true, that some elements in 
the one table coincide in name with some elements in the other. 
This coincidence is, however, only equivocal. In reality, the 
whole Kantian categories must be excluded frrom the Aristotelic 
list, as entia rationis, as notiones secundcc — in short, as determ- 
inations of thought, and not genera of real things ; while the sev 
eral elements would be specially excluded, as partial, privative, 
transcendent, &c. But if it would be unjust to criticise the 
categories of Kant in whole, or in part, by the Aristotelic canon, 
what must we think of Kant, who, after magnifying the idea 
of investigating the forms of pure intellect as worthy of the 



COUSIN ON THE CATEGORIES OF ARISTOTLE AND KANT. 33 

mighty genius of the Stagirite, proceeds, on this false hypothesis, 
to blame the execution, as a kind of patch-work, as incomplete, 
as confounding derivative with simple notions ; nay, even, on the 
narrow principles of his own Critique, as mixing the forms of 
pure sense with the forms of pure understanding? 1 If M. Cousin 
also were correct in his supposition that Aristotle and his follow- 
ers had viewed his categories as an analysis of the fundamental 
forms of thought, he would find his own reduction of the ele- 
ments of reason to a double principle anticipated in the scholas- 
tic division of existence into ens per se and ens per accidens. 

Nor is our author correct in thinking that the categories of 
Aristotle and Kant are complete, inasmuch as they are co-ex- 
tensive with his own. As to the former, if the Infinite were not 
excluded, on what would rest the scholastic distinction of ens cate- 
goricum and ens transcendens? The logicians require that pre- 
dicamental matter shall be of a limited and finite nature ; 2 (rod, 
as infinite, is thus excluded : and while it is evident from the 
whole context of his book of categories, that Aristotle there only 
contemplated a distribution of the finite, so, in other of his works, 
he more than once emphatically denies the infinite as an object 
not only of knowledge, but of thought ; — to wrreipov wyvwcnov fj 
airetpov — to drrretpov ovt€ votjtov, ovTe aladrjTov. 3 But if Aristotle 
thus regards the Infinite as beyond the compass of thought, Kant 
views it as, at least, beyond the sphere of knowledge. If M. Cousin 
indeed employed the term category in relation to the Kantian 
philosophy in the Kantian acceptation, he would be as erroneous 
in regard to Kant as he is in regard to Aristotle ; but we presume 
that he wishes, under that term, to include not only the " Cate- 
gories of Understanding," but the "Ideas of Reason." 4 But Kant 

1 See the Critik d. r. V. and the Prolegomena. 

2 [M. Peisse, in a note here, quotes the common logical law of categorical entities, 
well and briefly expressed in the following verse : 

" Entia per sese, Jinita, realia, tota." 

He likewise justly notices, that nothing is included in the Aristotelic categories but 
what is susceptible of definition, consequently of analysis.] 

3 Phys. L. hi. c. 10, text. 66, c. 7, text. 40. See also Metaph. L. ii. c. 2, text. 11. 
Analyt. Post. L. i. c. 20, text. 39 — et alibi. — [Aristotle's definition of the Infinite (of 
the aneipov in contrast to the aopurrov) — "that of which there is always something 
beyond," may be said to be a definition only of the Indefinite. This I shall not gain- 
say. But it was the only Infinite which he contemplated ; as it is the only Infinite 
of which we can form a notion.] 

4 [" The Categories of Kant are simple forms or frames (schemata) of the Under- 
standing {Verstand) under which, an object to be known, must be necessarily thought 
Kant's Ideas, a word which he expressly borrowed from Plato, are concepts of the 

c 



34 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

limits knowledge to experience, and experience to the categories 
of the understanding, which, in reality, are only so many forms 
of the conditioned ; and allows to the notion of the unconditioned 
(corresponding to the ideas of reason) no objective reality, regard- 
ing it merely as a regulative principle in the arrangement of 
our thoughts. As M. Cousin, however, holds that the uncondi- 
tioned is not only subjectively conceived, but objectively known ; 
he is thus totally wrong in regard to the one philosopher, and 
wrong in part in relation to the other. 

In the second place, our author maintains that the idea of the 
infinite, or absolute, and the idea of the finite, or relative, are 
equally real, because the notion of the one necessarily suggests 
the notion of the other. 

Correlatives certainly suggest each other, but correlatives may, 
or may not, he equally real and positive. In thought contradic- 
tories necessarily imply each other, for the knowledge of contra- 
dictories is one. But the reality of one contradictory, so far from 
guaranteeing the reality of the other, is nothing else than its 
negation. Thus every positive notion (the concept of a thing by 
what it is) suggests a negative notion (the concept of a thing by 
what it is not;) and the highest positive notion, the notion of the 
conceivable, is not without its corresponding negative in the 
notion of the inconceivable. But though these mutually suggest 
each other, the positive alone is real ; the negative is only an ab- 
straction of the other, and in the highest generality, even an ab- 
straction of thought itself. It therefore behoved M. Cousin, in- 
stead of assuming the objective correality of his two elements on 
the fact of their subjective correlation, to have suspected, on this 
very ground, that the reality of the one was inconsistent with the 
reality of the other. In truth, upon examination, it will be found 
that his two primitive ideas are nothing more than contradictory 
relatives. These, consequently, of their very nature, imply each 
other in thought ; but they imply each other only as affirmation 
and negation of the same. 

We have already shown, that though the Conditioned (condi- 
tionally limited) be one, what is opposed to it as the Uncondi- 
tioned, is plural : that the unconditional negation of limitation 

Reason (Vcmwift;) whose objects transcending the sphere of all experience actual or 
possible, consequently do not fall under the categories, in other words, are positively 
unknowable. These ideas are God, Matter, Soul, objects which, considered out of 
relation, or in their transcendent reality, are so many phases of the Absolute." — M. 
Peisse.J 



COUSIN'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 35 

gives one unconditioned, the Infinite ; as the unconditional affirm- 
ation of limitation affords another, the Absolute. This, while it 
coincides with the opinion, that the Unconditioned in either phasis 
is inconceivable, is repugnant to the doctrine, that the uncondi- 
tioned (absoluto-infinite) can be positively construed to the mind. 
For those who, with M. Cousin, regard the notion of the uncon- 
ditioned as a positive and real knowledge of existence in its all- 
comprehensive unity, and who consequently employ the terms 
Absolute, Infinite, Unconditioned, as only various expressions for 
the same identity, are imperatively bound to prove that their idea 
of the One corresponds — either with that Unconditioned ive have 
distinguished as the Absolute — or with that Unconditioned we 
have distinguished as the Infinite — or that it includes both — or 
that it excludes both. This they have not done, and, we suspect, 
have never attempted to do. 

Our author maintains, that the unconditioned is known under 
the laws of consciousness ; and does not, like Schelling, pretend 
to an intuition of existence beyond the bounds of space and time. 
Indeed, he himself expressly predicates the absolute and infinite 
of these forms. 

Time is only the image or the concept of a certain correlation 
of existences — of existence, therefore, pro tanto, as conditioned. 
It is thus itself only a form of the conditioned. But let that pass. 
Is, then, the Absolute conceivable of time ? Can we conceive 
time as unconditionally limited ? We can easily represent to 
ourselves time under any relative limitation of commencement 
and termination ; but we are conscious to ourselves of nothing 
more clearly, than that it would be equally possible to think 
without thought, as to construe to the mind an absolute com- 
mencement, or an absolute termination, of time ; that is, a begin- 
ning and an end, beyond which, time is conceived as non-existent. 
G-oad imagination to the utmost, it still sinks paralyzed within 
the bounds of time ; and time survives as the condition of the 
thought itself in which we annihilate the universe : 

" Sur les mondes detruits le Temps dort immobile." 

But if the Absolute be inconceivable of this form, is the Infinite 
more comprehensible ? Can we imagine time as unconditionally 
unlimited ? We can not conceive the infinite regress of time ; for 
such a notion could only be realized by the infinite addition in 
thought of finite times, and such an addition would, itself, require 



36 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

an eternity for its accomplishment. If we dream of effecting this, 
we only deceive ourselves by substituting the indefinite for the 
infinite, than which no two notions can be more opposed. The 
negation of the commencement of time involves likewise the affir- 
mation, that an infinite time has at every moment already run; 
that is, it implies the contradiction, that an infinite has been com- 
pleted — For the same reasons we are unable to conceive an infi- 
nite progress of time ; while the infinite regress and the infinite 
progress, taken together, involve the triple contradiction of an 
infinite concluded, of an infinite commencing, and of two infi- 
nites, not exclusive of each other. 

Space, like time, is only the intuition or the concept of a cer- 
tain correlation of existence — of existence, therefore, pro tanto, as 
conditioned. It is thus itself only a form of the conditioned. 
But apart from this, thought is equally powerless in realizing a 
notion either of the absolute totality, or of the infinite immensity, 
of space. — And while time and space, as wholes, can thus neither 
be conceived as absolutely limited, nor as infinitely unlimited ; so 
their parts can be represented to the mind neither as absolutely 
individual, nor as divisible to infinity. The universe can not be 
imagined as a whole, which may not also be imagined as a part ; 
nor an atom be imagined as a part, which may not also be imag- 
ined as a whole. 

The same analysis, with a similar result, can be applied to 
cause and effect, and to substance and phenomenon. These, how- 
ever, may both be reduced to the law itself of the conditioned. 1 

The Conditioned is, therefore, that only which can be positively 
conceived ; the Absolute and Infinite are conceived only as nega- 
tions of the conditioned in its opposite poles. 

Now, as we observed, M. Cousin, and those who confounded the 
absolute and infinite, and regard the Unconditioned as a positive 
and indivisible notion, must show that this notion coincides either, 
1°, with the notion of the Absolute, to the exclusion of the infi- 
nite ; or 2°, with the notion of the Infinite, to the exclusion of 
the absolute ; or 3°, that it includes both as true, carrying them 
up to indifference ; or 4°, that it excludes both as false. The last 
two alternatives are impossible, as either would be subversive of 
the highest principle of intelligence, which asserts, that of two 
contradictories, both can not, but one must, be true. It only, 

1 See Appendix I. for the applications of that doctrine. 



COUSIN'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 37 

therefore, remains to identify the unity of the Unconditioned with 
the Infinite, or with the Absolute — with either, to the exclusion 
of the other. But while every one must be intimately conscious 
of the impossibility of this, the very fact that our author and 
other philosophers a priori have constantly found it necessary to 
confound these contradictions, sufficiently proves that neither 
term has a right to represent the unity of the unconditioned, to 
the prejudice of the other. 1 

The Unconditioned is, therefore, not a positive concept ; nor 
has it even a real or intrinsic unity ; for it only combines the 
Absolute and the Infinite, in themselves contradictory of each 
other, into a unity relative to us by the negative bond of their in- 
conceivability. It is on this mistake of the relative for the irre- 
spective, of the negative for the positive, that M. Cousin's theory 
is founded : And it is not difficult to understand how the mistake 
originated. 

This reduction of M. Cousin's two ideas of the Infinite and 
Finite to one positive conception and its negative, implicitly anni- 
hilates also the third idea, devised by him as a connection be- 
tween his two substantive ideas ; and which he marvelously 
identifies with the relation of cause and effect. 

Yet before leaving this part of our subject, we may observe, 
that the very simplicity of our analysis is a strong presumption 
in favor of its truth. A plurality of causes is not to be postu- 
lated, where one is sufficient to account for the phenomena (Entia 
non sunt multiplicanda prater necessitatem) : and M. Cousin, in 
supposing three positive ideas, where only one is necessary, brings 
the rule of parsimony against his hypothesis, even before its un- 
soundness may be definitely brought to light. 

In the third place, the restrictions to which our author subjects 
intelligence, divine and human, implicitly deny a knowledge — 
even a concept — of the absolute, both to (rod and man. — u The 
condition of intelligence," says M. Cousin, "is difference; and an 
act of knowledge is only possible where there exists a plurality 
of terms. Unity does not suffice for conception ; variety is neces- 
sary ; nay more, not only is variety necessary, there must like- 
wise subsist an intimate relation between the principles of unity 

1 [The first three cases had, indeed, been realized in the Eleatic school alone. The 
first by Parmenides, the second by Melissus, the third by Xenophanes. The fourth 
has not, I presume, been explicitly held by any philosopher ; but the silent confusion 
of the Absolute and Infinite has been always common enough.] 



38 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

and variety ; without which, the variety not being perceived by 
the unity, the one is as if it could not perceive, and the other as 
if it could not be perceived. Look back for a moment into your- 
selves, and you will find, that what constitutes intelligence in our 
feeble consciousness, is, that there are there several terms, of which 
the one perceives the other, of which the other is perceived by the 
first : in this consists self-knowledge — in this consists self-compre- 
hension — in this consists intelligence : intelligence without con- 
sciousness is the abstract possibility of intelligence, not intelli- 
gence in the act ; and consciousness implies diversity and differ- 
ence. Transfer all this from human to absolute intelligence ; that 
is to say, refer the ideas to the only intelligence to which they 
can belong. You have thus, if I may so express myself, the life 
of absolute intelligence ; you have this intelligence with the com- 
plete development of the elements which are necessary for it to 
be a true intelligence ; you have all the momenta whose relation 
and motion constitute the reality of knowledge." — In all this, so 
far as human intelligence is concerned, we cordially agree ; for a 
more complete admission could not be imagined, not only that a 
knowledge, and even a notion, of the absolute is impossible for 
man, but that we are unable to conceive the possibility of such a 
knowledge, even in the Deity, without contradicting our human 
conceptions of the possibility of intelligence itself. Our author, 
however, recognizes no contradiction; and, without argument or 
explanation, accords a knowledge of that which can only be known 
under the negation of all difference and plurality, to that which 
can only know under the affirmation of both. 

If a knowledge of the absolute were possible under these con- 
ditions, it may excite our wonder that other philosophers should 
have viewed this supposition as utterly impossible; and that 
Schelling, whose acuteness was never questioned, should have 
exposed himself gratuitously to the reproach of mysticism, by his 
postulating for a few, and through a faculty above the reach of 
consciousness, a knowledge already given to all in the fact of con- 
sciousness itself. Monstrous as is the postulate of the Intellectual 
Intuition, we freely confess that it is only through such a faculty 
that we can imagine the possibility of a science of the absolute ; 
and have no hesitation in acknowledging, that if Schelling's hypo- 
thesis appear to us incogitable, that of Cousin is seen to be self- 
contradictory. 

Our author admits, and must admit, that the Absolute, as ab- 



COUSIN'S DOCTRINE OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 39 

solutely universal, is absolutely one; absolute unity is convert- 
ible with the absolute negation of plurality and difference; the 
absolute, and the knowledge of the absolute, are therefore iden- 
tical. But knowledge, or intelligence, it is asserted by M. Cousin, 
supposes a plurality of terms — the plurality of subject and object. 
Intelligence, whose essence is plurality, can not therefore be 
identified with the absolute, whose essence is unity; and if 
known, the absolute, as known, must be different from the abso- 
lute, as existing ; that is, there must be two absolutes — an abso- 
lute in knowledge, and an absolute in existence, which is con- 
tradictory. 

But waiving this contradiction, and allowing the non-identity 
of knowledge and existence, the absolute as known must be 
known under the conditions of the absolute as existing, that is, 
as absolute unity. But, on the other hand, it is asserted, that 
the condition of intelligence, as knowing, is plurality and differ- 
ence ; consequently the condition of the absolute, as existing, and 
under which it must be known, and the condition of intelligence, 
as capable of knowing, are incompatible. For, if we suppose the 
absolute cognizable: it must be identified either — 1°, with the 
subject knowing; or, 2°, with the object known; or, 3°, with the 
indifference of both. The first hypothesis, and the second, are 
contradictory of the absolute. For in these the absolute is sup- 
posed to be known, either as contradistinguished from the know- 
ing subject, or as contradistinguished from the object known; in 
other words, the absolute is asserted to be known as absolute 
unity, i. e. as the negation of all plurality, while the very act by 
which it is known, affirms plurality as the condition of its own 
possibility. The third hypothesis, on the other hand, is contra- 
dictory of the plurality of intelligence ; for if the subject and 
the object of consciousness be known as one, a plurality of terms 
is not the necessary condition of intelligence. The alternative is 
therefore necessary: Either the absolute can not be known or 
conceived at all ; or our author is wrong in subjecting thought to 
the conditions of plurality and difference. It was the iron neces- 
sity of the alternative that constrained Schelling to resort to the 
hypothesis of a knowledge in identity through the intellectual 
intuition; and it could only be from an oversight of the main 
difficulties of the problem that M. Cousin, in abandoning the in- 
tellectual intuition, did not abandon the absolute itself. For how 
that, whose essence is all-comprehensive unity, can be known by 



40 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

the negation of that unity under the condition of plurality — how 
that, which exists only as the identity of all difference, can be 
known under the negation of that identity, in the antithesis of 
subject and object, of knowledge and existence : — these are con- 
tradictions which M. Cousin has not attempted to solve — contra- 
dictions which he does not seem to have contemplated. 

In the fourth place. — The objection of the inconceivable nature 
of Schelling's intellectual intuition, and of a knowledge of the 
absolute in identity, apparently determined our author to adopt 
the opposite, but suicidal alternative — of a knowledge of the ab- 
solute in consciousness, and by difference. The equally insuper- 
able objection — that from the absolute defined as absolute, Schel- 
ling had not been able, without inconsequence, to deduce the 
conditioned, seems, in like manner, to have influenced M. Cousin 
to define the absolute by a relative; not observant, it would 
appear, that though he thus facilitated the derivation of the con- 
ditioned, he annihilated in reality the absolute itself. By the 
former proceeding, our author virtually denies the possibility of 
the absolute in thought ; by the latter, the possibility of the ab- 
solute in existence. 

The absolute is defined by our author, "an absolute cause — a 
cause which can not but pass into act.'''' Now, it is sufficiently 
manifest that a thing existing' absolutely (i. e. not under relation), 
and a thing existing' absolutely as a cause, are contradictory. 
The former is the absolute negation of all relation, the latter is 
the absolute affirmation of a particular relation. A cause is a 
relative, and what exists absolutely as a cause, exists absolutely 
under relation. Schelling has justly observed, that "he would 
deviate wide as the poles from the idea of the absolute, who would 
think of defining its nature by the notion of activity" ' But he 
who would define the absolute by the notion of a cause, would 
deviate still more widely from its nature ; inasmuch as the notion 
of a cause involves not only the notion of a determination to 
activity, but of a determination to a particular, nay a dependent, 
kind of activity — an activity not immanent, but transeunt. What 
exists merely as a cause, exists merely for the sake of something 
else — is not final in itself, but simply a mean toward an end; 
and in the accomplishment of that end, it consummates its own 
perfection. Abstractly considered, the effect is therefore superior 
to the cause. A cause, as cause, may indeed be better than one 

1 Bruno, p. 171. 



COUSIN'S SPECULATIVE THEOLOGY. 41 

or two, or any given number of its effects. But the total com- 
plement of the effects of what exists only as a cause, is better 
than that which, ex hypothesis exists merely for the sake of their 
production. Further, not only is an absolute cause dependent on 
the effect for its perfection — it is dependent on it even for its 
reality. For to what extent a thing exists necessarily as a 
cause, to that extent it is not all-sufficient to itself ; since to that 
extent it is dependent on the effect, as on the condition through 
which alone it realizes its existence ; and what exists absolutely 
as a cause, exists therefore in absolute dependence on the effect 
for the reality of its existence. An absolute cause, in truth, only 
exists in its effects: it never is, it always becomes; for it is an 
existence in potentia, and not an existence in actu, except through 
and in its effects. The absolute is thus, at best, a being merely 
inchoative and imperfect. 

The definition of the absolute by absolute cause is, therefore, 
tantamount to a negation of itself; for it defines by relation and 
conditions, that which is conceived only as exclusive of both. 
The same is true of the definition of the absolute by substance. 
But of this we do not now speak. 

The vice of M. Cousin's definition of the absolute by absolute 
cause, is manifested likewise in its applications. He maintains 
that his theory can alone explain the nature and relations of the 
Deity; and on its absolute incompetency to fulfill the conditions 
of a rational theism, we are willing to rest our demonstration of 
its radical unsoundness. 

"Grod," says our author, "creates; he creates in virtue of his 
creative power, and he draws the universe, not from nonentity, 
but from himself, who is absolute existence. His distinguishing 
characteristic being an absolute creative force, which can not but 
pass into activity, it follows, not that the creation is possible, but 
that it is necessary." 

"We must be very brief. The subjection of the Deity to a ne- 
cessity — a necessity of self-manifestation identical with the crea- 
tion of the universe, is contradictory of the fundamental postulates 
of a divine nature. On this theory, Grod is not distinct from the 
world ; the creature is a modification of the creator. Now, with- 
out objecting that the simple subordination of the Deity to ne- 
cessity, is in itself tantamount to his dethronement, let us see 
to what consequences this necessity, on the hypothesis of M. 
Cousin, inevitably leads. On this hypothesis, one of two altern- 



42 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

atives must be admitted. Grod, as necessarily determined to pass 
from absolute essence to relative manifestation, is determined to 
pass either from the better to the worse, or from the worse to the 
better. A third possibility, that both states are equal, as contra- 
dictory in itself, and as contradicted by our author, it is not 
necessary to consider. 

The first supposition must be rejected. The necessity in this 
case determines Grod to pass from the better to the worse ; that 
is, operates to his partial annihilation. The power which compels 
this must be external and hostile, for nothing operates willingly 
to its own deterioration ; and, as superior to the pretended Grod, 
is either itself the real deity, if an intelligent and free cause, or a 
negation of all deity, if a blind force or fate. 

The second is equally inadmissible : — that Grod, passing into 
the universe, passes from a state of comparative imperfection, 
into a state of comparative perfection. The divine nature is iden- 
tical with the most perfect nature, and is also identical with the 
first cause. If the first cause be not identical with the most 
perfect nature, there is no Grod, for the two essential conditions 
of his existence are not in combination. Now, on the present 
supposition, the most perfect nature is the derived ; nay the uni- 
verse, the creation, the yivo/xevov, is, in relation to its cause, the 
real, the actual, the ovtq)<; ov. It would also be the divine, but 
that divinity supposes also the notion of cause, while the universe, 
ex hypothesi, is only an effect. 

It is no answer to these difficulties for M. Cousin to say, that 
the Deity, though a cause which can not choose but create, is not, 
however, exhausted in the act ; and though passing with all the 
elements of his being into the universe, that he remains entire in 
his essence, and with all the superiority of the cause over the 
effect. The dilemma is unavoidable : — Either the Deity is inde- 
pendent of the universe for his being or perfection ; on which 
alternative our author must abandon his theory of Grod, and the 
necessity of creation : Or the Deity is dependent on his mani- 
festation in the universe for his being or perfection ; on which 
alternative, his doctrine is assailed by the difficulties previously 
stated. 

The length to which the preceding observations have extended, 
prevents us from adverting to sundry other opinions of our author, 
which we conceive to be equally unfounded. — For example (to 
say nothing of his proof of the impersonality of intelligence, 



OUR HIGHEST WISDOM IS A LEARNED IGNORANCE. 43 

because, forsooth, truth is not subject to our will), what can be 
conceived more self-contradictory than his theory of moral liberty ? 
Divorcing liberty from intelligence, but connecting it with per- 
sonality, he defines it to be a cause which is determined to act by 
its proper energy alone. But (to say nothing of remoter difficul- 
ties) how liberty can be conceived, supposing always a plurality 
of modes of activity, without a knowledge of that plurality ; — how 
a faculty can resolve to act by preference in a particular man- 
ner, and not determine itself by final causes ; — how intelligence 
can influence a blind power without operating as an efficient 
cause ; — or how, in fine, morality can be founded on a liberty 
which, at best, only escapes necessity by taking refuge with 
chance : — these are problems which M. Cousin, in none of his 
works, has stated, and which we are confident he is unable to 
solve. 

After the tenor of our previous observations, it is needless to 
say that we regard M. Cousin's attempt to establish a general 
peace among philosophers, by the promulgation of his Eclectic 
theory, as a failure. But though no converts to his Uncondi- 
tioned, and viewing with regret what we must regard as the 
misapplication of his distinguished talents, we can not disown a 
strong feeling of interest and admiration for those qualities, even 
in their excess, which have betrayed him, with so many other 
aspiring philosophers, into a pursuit which could only end in dis- 
appointment ; — we mean his love of truth, and his reliance on 
the powers of man. Not to despair of philosophy is " a last infir- 
mity of noble minds." The stronger the intellect, the stronger 
the confidence in its force ; the more ardent the appetite for 
knowledge, the less are we prepared to canvass the uncertainty 
of the fruition. "The wish is parent to the thought." Loth 
to admit that our science is at best the reflection of a reality we 
can not know, we strive to penetrate to existence in itself; and 
what we have labored intensely to attain, we at last fondly be- 
lieve we have accomplished. But, like Ixion, we embrace a cloud 
for a divinity. Conscious only of — conscious only in and through, 
limitation, we think to comprehend the infinite ; and dream even 
of establishing the science — the nescience of man, on an identity 
with the omniscience of GJ-od. It is this powerful tendency of the 
most vigorous minds to transcend the sphere of our faculties, 
which makes a "learned ignorance" the most difficult acquire- 
ment, perhaps, indeed, the consummation, of knowledge. In the 



44 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONDITIONED. 

words of a forgotten, but acute philosopher : — " Magna, immo 
maxima pars sapiential est — qucedam cequo animo nescire velle" 1 

[Infinitas ! Infinitas ! 
Hie mundus est infinitas. Secare mens at pergito, 

Infinitas et totus est, Nunquam secare desine ; 

(Nam mente nunquam absolveris ;) In sectione qualibet 

Infinitas et illius Infinitates dissecas. 

Pars quambet, partisquc pars. Quiesce mens heic denique, 

Quod tangis est infinitas ; Arctosque nosce limites 

Quod cernis est infinitas ; Queis contineris undique ; 

Quod non vides corpusculum, Quiesce mens, et limites 

Sed mente sola concipis, In orbe cessa quserere. 

Corpusculi et corpusculum, Quod quaeris in te repperis : 

Huj usque pars corpusculi, In mente sunt, in mente sunt, 

Partisque pars, hujusque pars, Hi, quos requiris, termini ; 

In hacque parte quicquid est, A rebus absunt limites, 

Infinitatem continet. In hisce tantum infinitas, 

Infinitas ! Infinitas ! 

Proh, quantus heic acervus est ! 

Et quam nihil quod nostra mens 

Ex hoc acervo intelligit ! 

At ilia Mens vah, qualis est, 

Conspecta cui stant omnia ! 

In singulis quse perspicit 

Qufficunque sunt in singulis 

Et singulorum singulis !"] 

1 [See Appendix I. for testimonies in regard to the limitation of our knowledge.] 



II.-PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 1 



(October, 1830.) 

(Euvres Completes de Thomas Reid, chef de Vecole Ecossaise. 
Publiees par M. Th. Jouffroy, avec des Fragments de M. 
Royer-Collard, et une Introduction de VEditeur. — Tomes 
II.-VI. 8vo. Paris, 1828-9, (not completed.) 

"We rejoice in the appearance of this work — and for two rea- 
sons. We hail it as another sign of the convalescence of philoso- 
phy, in a great and influential nation ; and prize it as a season- 
able testimony, hy intelligent foreigners, to the merits of a philo- 
sopher, whose reputation is, for the moment, under an eclipse at 
home. 

Apart from the practical corruption, of which (in the emphatic 
language of Fichte) "the dirt-philosophy" may have been the 
cause, we regard the doctrine of mind, long dominant in France, 
as more pernicious, through the stagnation of thought which it 
occasioned, than for the speculative errors which it set afloat. 
The salutary fermentation, which the skepticism of Hume determ- 
ined in Scotland and in Germany, did not extend to that coun- 
try ; and the dogmatist there slumbered on, unsuspicious of his 
principles, nay even resigned to conclusions, which would make 
philosophy to man, the solution of the terrific oracle to (Edipus : 
" Mayst thou ne'er learn the truth of what thou art !" 

" Since the metaphysic of Locke," says M. Cousin, " crossed 

1 [In French by M. Peisse ; in Italian by S. Lo Gatto ; in Cross's Selections. 

Some deletions, found necessary in consequence of the unexpected length to which 
the Article extended (especially from the second paragraph on this page, to " contri- 
buted," near the top of page 49), have been restored. One note has been omitted, 
which Mr. Napier had appended ; not that I would proclaim a dissent from its state 
ments, but simply because it is not mine. I have added little or nothing to this criti- 
cism beyond references to my Dissertations supplementary of Reid, when the points 
under discussion are there more fully or more accurately treated.] 



46 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

the channel, on the light and brilliant wings of Voltaire's imagin- 
ation ; Sensualism has reigned in France, without contradiction, 
and with an authority of which there is no parallel in the whole 
history of philosophy. It is a fact, marvelous hut incontestable, 
that from the time of Condillac, there has not appeared among us 
any philosophical work, at variance with his doctrine, which has 
produced the smallest impression on the public mind. Condillac 
thus reigned in peace ; and his domination, prolonged even to our 
own days, through changes of every kind, pursued its tranquil 
course, apparently above the reach of danger. Discussion had 
ceased : his disciples had only to develop the words of their mas- 
ter : philosophy seemed accomplished." — {Journal des Savans, 
1819.) 

Nor would such a result have been desirable, had the one ex- 
clusive opinion been true, as it was false — innocent, as it was 
corruptive. If the accomplishment of philosophy imply a cessa- 
tion of discussion — if the result of speculation be a paralysis of 
itself; the consummation of knowledge is the condition of intel- 
lectual barbarism. Plato has profoundly defined man, " the 
hunter of truth ;" for in this chase, as in others, the pursuit is all 
in all, the success comparatively nothing. " Did the Almighty," 
says Lessing, "holding in his right hand Truth, and in his left 
Search after Truth, deign to proffer me the one I might prefer ; 
— in all humility but without hesitation, I should request — 
Search after TruthP "We exist only as we energize: pleasure 
is the reflex of unimpeded energy ; energy is the mean by which 
our faculties are developed; and a higher energy the end which 
their development proposes. In action is thus contained the 
existence, happiness, improvement, and perfection of our being ; 
and knowledge is only precious, as it may afford a stimulus to 
the exercise of our powers, and the condition of their more com- 
plete activity. Speculative truth is, therefore, subordinate to 
speculation itself; and its value is directly measured by the quan- 
tity of energy which it occasions — immediately in its discovery 
— mediately through its consequences. Life to Endymion was 
not preferable to death ; aloof from practice, a waking error is 
better than a sleeping truth. Neither, in point of fact, is there 
found any proportion between the possession of truths, and the 
development of the mind in which they are deposited. Every 
learner in science, is now familiar with more truths than Aris- 
totle or Plato ever dreamt of knowing ; yet, compared with the 



SPECULATION HIGHER THAN SPECULATIVE TRUTH. 47 

Stagirite or the Athenian, how few, among our masters of modern 
science, rank higher than intellectual barbarians ! Ancient G reece 
and modern Europe prove, indeed, that "the march of intellect" 
is no inseparable concomitant of "the march of science:" — that 
the cultivation of the individual is not to be rashly confounded 
with the progress of the species. 

But if the possession of theoretical facts be not convertible 
with mental improvement; and if the former be important only 
as subservient to the latter ; it follows, that the comparative 
utility of a study is not to be principally estimated by the com- 
plement of truths which it may communicate ; but by the de- 
gree in which it determines our higher capacities to action. But 
though this be the standard by which the different methods, 
the different branches, and the different masters, of philosophy, 
ought to be principally (and it is the only criterion by which 
they can all be satisfactorily) tried ; it is neverthless a standard 
by which, neither methods, nor sciences, nor philosophers, have 
ever yet been even inadequately appreciated. The critical his- 
tory of philosophy, in this spirit, has still to be written ; and 
when written, how opposite will be the rank, which, on the 
higher and more certain standard, it will frequently adjudge — to 
the various branches of knowledge, and the various modes of 
their cultivation — to different ages, and countries, and individu- 
als, from that which has been hitherto partially awarded, on the 
vacillating authority of the lower ! 

On this ground (which we have not been able fully to state, 
far less adequately to illustrate), we rest the pre-eminent utility 
of metaphysical speculations. That they comprehend all the 
sublimest objects of our theoretical and moral interest ; — that 
every (natural) conclusion concerning Grod, the soul, the present 
worth, and the future destiny of man, is exclusively metaphysi- 
cal, will be at once admitted. But we do not found the import- 
ance, on the paramount dignity, of the pursuit. It is as the best 
gymnastic of the mind — as a mean, principally, and almost 
exclusively conducive to the highest education of our noblest 
powers, that we would vindicate to these speculations the neces- 
sity, which has too frequently been denied them. By no other 
intellectual application (and least of all by physical pursuits) is 
the soul thus reflected on itself, and its faculties concentered in 
such independent, vigorous, unwonted and continued energy ; — 
by none, therefore, are its best capacities so variously and in- 



48 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

tensely evolved. "Where there is most life, there is the vio- 
tory." 

Let it not be believed, that the mighty minds who have culti- 
vated these studies, have toiled in vain. If they have not always 
realized truth, they have always determined exertion ; and in 
the congenial eloquence of the elder Scaliger: — " Eae subtilitates, 
quanquam sint animis otiosis otiosae atque inutiles ; vegetis 
tamen ingeniis summam cognoscendi afferunt voluptatem — sitae, 
scilicet in fastigio ejus sapientiae, quae rerum omnium principia 
contemplatur. Et quamvis harum indagatio non sit utilis ad 
machinas farinarias conficiendas ; exuit tamen animum inscitiae 
rubigine, acuitque ad alia. Eo denique splendore afficit, ut pree- 
luceat sibi ad nanciscendum prirni opificis similitudinem. Qui, 
ut omnia plene ac perfecte est, at praeter et supra omnia ; ita 
eos, qui scientiarum studiosi sunt, suos esse voluit, ipsorumque 
intellectum rerum dominum constituit." : 

The practical danger which has sometimes been apprehended 
from metaphysical pursuits, has in reality only been found to 
follow from their stunted and partial cultivation. The poison 
has grown up ; the antidote has been repressed. In Britain and 
in Grermany, where speculation has remained comparatively free, 
the dominant result has been highly favorable to religion and 
morals ; while the evils which arose in France, arose from the 
benumbing influence of a one effete philosophy ; and have, in 
point of fact, mainly been corrected by the awakened spirit of 
metaphysical inquiry itself. 

With these views, we rejoice, as we said, in the appearance 
of this translation of the works of Reid — in Paris — and under 
the auspices of so distinguished an editor as M. Jouffroy, less, 
certainly, as indicating the triumph of any particular system or 
school, than as a pledge, among many others, of the zealous yet 
liberal and unexclusive spirit, with which the science of mind 
has of late been cultivated in France. In the history of French 
philosophy, indeed the last ten years stand in the most remark- 
able contrast to the hundred immediately preceding. The state 
of thralldom in that country during the century to one chronic 
despotism — perpetuating itself by paralyzing speculation, in ren- 



1 Bacon himself, the great champion of physical pursuits : — " Non inutiles scientias 
existimandce sunt, quarum in se nullus est usus, 6i ingenia acuant et ordinent." — 
Hume, Burke, Kant, Stewart, &c, &c, might be quoted to the same effect. — Com- 
pare Aristotle, Metaph. i. 2 ; Eth. Nic. x. 7. 



UTILITY OF METAPHYSICAL STUDIES. 49 

dering its objects, objects of disgust — we have already presented, 
in a striking passage, written by M. Cousin, toward its conclu- 
sion ; but a very different picture would await his pencil, were 
he now to delineate the subsequent progress of that spirit of phi- 
losophy, to whose emancipation, recovery, and exaltation, during 
the decade, he has himself so powerfully contributed. The pres- 
ent contrast, indeed, which the philosophical enthusiasm of France 
exhibits to the speculative apathy of Britain, is any thing but 
flattering to ourselves. The new spirit of metaphysical inquiry, 
which the French imbibed from Germany and Scotland, arose 
with them precisely at the time when the popularity of psycho- 
logical researches began to decline with us ; and now, when all 
interest in these speculations seems here to be extinct, they are 
there seen flourishing, in public favor, with a universality and 
vigor corresponding to their encouragement. 

The only example, indeed, that can be adduced of any interest 
in such subjects, recently exhibited in this country, is the favor- 
able reception of Dr. Brown's Lectures on the Philosophy of the 
Mind. This work, however, we regard as a concurrent cause of 
the very indifference we lament, and as a striking proof of its 
reality. 

As a cause : — These lectures have certainly done much to jus- 
tify the general neglect of psychological pursuits. Dr. Brown's 
high reputation for metaphysical acuteness, gave a presumptive 
authority to any doctrine he might promulgate ; and the personal 
relations in which he stood to Mr. Stewart afforded every assur- 
ance, that he would not revolt against that philosopher's opin- 
ions, rashly, or except on grounds that would fully vindicate his 
dissent. In these circumstances, what was the impression on 
the public mind ; when all that was deemed best established — 
all that was claimed as original and most important in the phi- 
losophy of Reid and Stewart, was proclaimed by their disciple 
and successor to be naught but a series of misconceptions, only 
less wonderful in their commission than in the general ac- 
quiescence in their truth ! Confidence was at once withdrawn 
from a pursuit, in which the most sagacious inquirers were 
thus at fault ; and the few who did not relinquish the study in 
despair, clung with implicit faith to the revelation of the new 
apostle. 

As a proof: — These lectures afford evidence of how greatly 
talent has, of late, been withdrawn from the field of metaphysical 

D 



50 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

discussion. This work has now been before the world for ten 
years. In itself it combines many of the qualities calculated to 
attract public, and even popular, attention ; while its admirers 
have exhausted hyperbole in its praise, and disparaged every 
philosophic name to exalt the reputation of its author. Yet, 
though attention has been thus concentered on these lectures for 
so long a period, and though the high ability and higher au- 
thority of Dr. Brown, deserved and would have recompensed the 
labor ; we are not aware that any adequate attempt has yet been 
made to subject them, in whole or in part, to an enlightened and 
impartial criticism. The radical inconsistencies which they in- 
volve, in every branch of their subject, remain undeveloped ; 
their unacknowledged appropriations are still lauded as original ; 
their endless mistakes, in the history of philosophy, stand yet 
uncorrected ; and their frequent misrepresentations of other philo- 
sophers continue to mislead. 1 In particular, nothing has more 
convinced us of the general neglect, in this country, of psycholo- 
gical science, than that Dr. Brown's ignorant attack on Reid, 
and, through Reid, confessedly on Stewart, has not long since 
been repelled ; — except, indeed, the general belief that it was tri- 
umphant. 

In these circumstances, we felt gratified, as we said, with the 
present honorable testimony to the value of Dr. Reid's specula- 
tions in a foreign country ; and have deemed this a seasonable 
opportunity of expressing our own opinion on the subject, and of 
again vindicating, we trust, to that philosopher, the well-earned 
reputation of which he has been too long defrauded in his own. 
If we are not mistaken in our view, we shall, in fact, reverse the 
marvel, and retort the accusation ; in proving that Dr. Brown 



1 We shall, in the sequel, afford samples of these "inconsistencies," "mistakes," 
"misrepresentations," — but not of Brown's "appropriations." To complete the 
cycle, and vindicate our assertion, we may here adduce one specimen of the way in 
wliich discoveries have been lavished on him, in consequence of his omission (excus- 
able, perhaps, in the circumstances) to advertise his pupils when he was not original. 
Brown's doctrine of Generalization, is identical with that commonly taught by philo- 
sophers — not Scottish ; and, among these, by authors, with whose works his lectures 
prove him to have been well acquainted. But if a writer, one of the best informed of 
those who, in this country, have of late cultivated this branch of philosophy, could, 
among other expressions equally encomiastic, speak of Brown's return to the vulgar 
opinion, on such a point, as of "a discovery, c$-c, which will in all future ages, be re- 
garded as one of the most important steps ever made in metaphysical science ;"" how in- 
competent must ordinary readers be to place Brown on his proper level — how de- 
sirable would have been a critical examination of his Lectures to distribute to him his 
own, and to estimate his property at its true value : [See Diss, on Reid, pp. 868, 
869, alibi.] 



BROWN'S ATTACK ON REID. 51 

himself is guilty of that " series of wonderful misconceptions," 
of which he so confidently arraigns his predecessors. 

" Turpe est doctori, cum culpa redarguit ipsum." 

This, however, let it be recollected, is no point of merely per- 
sonal concernment. It is true, indeed, that either Reid accom- 
plished nothing, or the science has retrograded under Brown. 
But the question itself regards the cardinal point of metaphysical 
philosophy ; and its determination involves the proof or the refu- 
tation of skepticism. 

The subject we have undertaken can with difficulty be com- 
pressed within the limits of a single article. This must stand our 
excuse for not, at present, noticing the valuable accompaniment 
to Reid's Essays on the Intellectual Powers, in the Fragments of 
M. Royer-Collard's Lectures, which are appended to the third 
and fourth volumes of the translation. A more appropriate occa- 
sion for considering these may, however, occur, when the first 
volume, containing M. Jouffroy's Introduction, appears; of which, 
from other specimens of his ability, we entertain no humble 
expectations. 

"Reid," says Dr. Brown, "considers his confutation of the 
ideal system as involving almost every thing which is truly his. 
Yet there are few circumstances connected with the fortune of 
modern philosophy, that appear to me more wonderful, than that 
a mind like Dr. Reid's, so learned in the history of metaphysical 
science, should have conceived, that on this point, any great 
merit, at least any merit of originality, was justly referable to 
him particularly. Indeed, the only circumstance which appears 
to me wonderful, is, that the claim thus made by him should 
have been so readily and generally admitted." (Led. xxv. p. 155.) 

Dr. Brown then proceeds, at great length, to show: 1°, That 
Reid, in his attempt to overthrow what he conceived " the com- 
mon theory of ideas," wholly misunderstood the catholic opinion, 
which was, in fact, identical with his own ; and actually attri- 
buted to all philosophers " a theory which had been universally, 
or, at least, almost universally, abandoned at the time he wrote ;" 
and, 2°, That the doctrine of perception, which Reid so absurdly 
fancies he had first established, affords, in truth, no better evi- 
dence of the existence of an external world, than even the long 
abandoned hypothesis which he had taken such idle labor to re- 
fute. 



52 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

In every particular of this statement, Dr. Brown is completely, 
and even curiously, wrong. He is out in his prelusive flourish — 
out in his serious assault. Reid is neither " so learned in the 
history of metaphysical science" as he verbally proclaims, nor so 
sheer an ignorant as he would really demonstrate. Estimated 
by aught above a very vulgar standard, Reid's knowledge of phi- 
losophical opinions was neither extensive nor exact ; and Mr. 
Stewart was himself too competent and candid a judge, not fully 
to acknowledge the deficiency. 1 But Reid's merits as a thinker 
are too high, and too securely established, to make it necessary 
to claim for his reputation an erudition to which he himself ad- 
vances no pretension. And, be his learning what it may, his 
critic, at least, has not been able to convict him of a single error ; 
while Dr. Brown himself rarely opens his mouth upon the older 
authors, without betraying his absolute unacquaintance with the 
matters on which he so intrepidly discourses. — Nor, as a specu- 
lator, does Reid's superiority admit, we conceive, of doubt. "With 
all admiration of Brown's general talent, we do not hesitate to 
assert, that, in the points at issue between the two philosophers, 
to say nothing of others, he has completely misapprehended Reid's 
philosophy, even in its fundamental position — the import of the 
skeptical reasoning 1 — and the significance of the only argument 
by which that reasoning is resisted. But, on the other hand, as 
Reid can only be defended on the ground of misconception, the 
very fact, that his great doctrine of perception could actually be 
reversed by so acute an intellect as Brown's, would prove that 
there must exist some confusion and obscurity in his own de- 
velopment of that doctrine, to render such a misinterpretation 
possible. Nor is this presumption wrong. In truth, Reid did 
not generalize to himself an adequate notion of the various possi- 
ble theories of perception, some of which he has accordingly con- 
founded : while his error of commission in discriminating con- 
sciousness as a special faculty, and his error of omission in not 
discriminating intuitive from representative knowledge — a dis- 
tinction without which his peculiar philosophy is naught — have 
contributed to render his doctrine of the intellectual faculties 
prolix, vacillating, perplexed, and sometimes even contradictory. 

Before proceeding to consider the doctrine of perception in re- 
lation to the points at issue between Reid and his antagonist, it 

' (Dissertation, &c. Part ii. p. 197.) [In my foot notes to Reid will be found 
abundant evidence of this deficiency.] 



CHARACTER OP BROWN'S ATTACK. 53 

is therefore necessary to disintricate the question, by relieving it 
of these two errors, had in themselves, hut worse in the confu- 
sion which they occasion ; for, as Bacon truly observes — " citius 
emergit Veritas ex errore quam ex confusione." And, first, of 
Consciousness. 

Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, and philosophers in general, have 
regarded Consciousness, not as a particular faculty, hut as the 
universal condition of intelligence. Reid, on the contrary, fol- 
lowing, probably, Hutcheson, and followed by Stewart, Royer- 
Collard, and others, has classed consciousness as a co-ordinate 
faculty with the other intellectual powers ; distinguished from 
them, not as the species from the individual, but as the individual 
from the individual. And as the particular faculties have each 
their peculiar object, so the peculiar object of consciousness is, 
the operations of the other faculties themselves, to the exclusion 
of the objects about which these operations are conversant. 

This analysis we regard as false. For it is impossible : in the 
first place, to discriminate consciousness from all the other cog- 
nitive faculties, or to discriminate any one of these from con- 
sciousness ; and, in the second, to conceive a faculty cognisant 
of the various mental operations, without being also cognisant of 
their several objects. 

We know ; and We know that we know : — these propositions, 
logically distinct, are really identical ; each implies the other. 
We know (i. e. feel, perceive, imagine, remember, &c.) only as we 
know that we thus know ; and we know that we know, only as we 
know in some particular manner (i. e. feel, perceive, &c). So 
true is the scholastic brocard : — " Non sentimus nisi sentiamus 
nos sentire ; non sentimus nos sentire nisi sentiamus." — The at- 
tempt to analyze the cognition / know, and the cognition I know 
that I know, into the separate energies of distinct faculties, is 
therefore vain. But this is the analysis of Reid. Consciousness, 
which the formula J know that I know adequately expresses, he 
views as a power specifically distinct from the various cognitive 
faculties comprehended under the formula i" know, precisely as 
these faculties are severally contradistinguished from each other. 
But here the parallel does not hold. I can feel without perceiv- 
ing, I can perceive without imagining, I can imagine without 
remembering, I can remember without judging (in the emphatic 
signification), I can judge without willing. One of these acts 
does not immediately suppose the other. Though modes merely 



54 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

of the same indivisible subject, they are modes in relation to each 
other, really distinct, and admit, therefore, of psychological dis- 
crimination. But can I feel, without being conscious that I feel? 
—can I remember, without being conscious that I remember? 
or, can I be conscious, without being conscious that I perceive, 
or imagine, or reason — that I energize, in short, in some determ- 
inate mode, which Reid would view as the act of a faculty spe- 
cifically different from consciousness ? That this is impossible, 
Reid himself admits. "Unde," says Tertullian — " unde ista 
tormenta cruciandse siinplicitatis et suspendendse veritatis ? Q,uis 
mihi exhibebit sensum non intelligentem se sentire ?" — But if, 
on the one hand, consciousness be only, realized under specific 
modes, and can not therefore exist apart from the several facul- 
ties in cumulo ; and if, on the other, these faculties can all and 
each only be exerted under the condition of consciousness ; con- 
sciousness, consequently, is not one of the special modes into 
which our mental activity may be resolved, but the fundamental 
form — the generic condition of them all. Every intelligent act 
is thus a modified consciousness ; and consciousness a compre- 
hensive term for the complement of our cognitive energies. 

But the vice of Dr. Reid's analysis is further manifested in his 
arbitrary limitation of the sphere of consciousness ; proposing to 
it the various intellectual operations, but excluding their objects. 
"I am conscious," he says, "of perception, but not of the object 
I perceive; I am conscious of memory, but not of the object I 
remember." 

The reduction of consciousness to a particular faculty entailed 
this limitation. For, once admitting consciousness to be cogni- 
sant of objects as of operations, Reid could not, without absurdity, 
degrade it to the level of a special power. For thus, in the first 
place, consciousness co-extensive with all our cognitive faculties, 
would yet be made co-ordinate with each : and, in the second, two 
faculties would be supposed to be simultaneously exercised about 
the same object, to the same intent. 

But the alternative which Reid has chosen is, at least, equally 
untenable. The assertion, that we can be conscious of an act of 
knowledge, without being conscious of its object, is virtually 
suicidal. A mental operation is only what it is, by relation to 
its object; the object at once determining its existence, and spe- 
cifying the character of its existence. But if a relation can not 
be comprehended in one of its terms, so we can not be conscious 



CONSCIOUSNESS NOT A SPECIAL FACULTY. 55 

of an operation, without being conscious of the object to which 
it exists only as correlative. For example, we are conscious of a 
perception, says Reid, but are not conscious of its object. Yet 
how can we be conscious of a perception, that is, how can we 
know that a perception exists* — that it is a perception, and not 
another mental state — and that it is the perception of a rose, and 
of nothing but a rose ; unless this consciousness involve a knowl- 
edge (or consciousness) of the object, which at once determines 
the existence of the act — specifies its kind — and distinguishes its 
individuality? Annihilate the object, you annihilate the opera- 
tion ; annihilate the consciousness of the object, you annihilate 
the consciousness of the operation. In the greater number indeed 
of our cognitive energies, the two terms of the relation of knowl- 
edge exist only as identical ; the object admitting only of a logical 
discrimination from the subject. I imagine a Hippogryph. The 
Hippogryph is at once the object of the act and the act itself. 
Abstract the one, the other has no existence : deny me the con- 
sciousness of the Hippogryph, you deny me the consciousness of 
the imagination ; I am conscious of zero ; I am not conscious at 
all. 

A difficulty may here be started in regard to two faculties — 
Memory and Perception. 

Memory is defined by Reid "an immediate knowledge of the 
past ;" and is thus distinguished from consciousness, which, with 
all philosophers, he views as "an immediate knowledge of the 
present." "We may therefore be conscious of the act of memory 
as present, but of its object as past, consciousness is impossible. 
And certainly, if Reid's definition of memory be admitted, this 
inference can not be disallowed. But memory is not an imme- 
diate knowledge of the past ; an immediate knoivledge of the past 
is a contradiction in terms. This is manifest, whether we look 
from the act to the object, or from the object to the act. To be 
known immediately, an object must be known in itself ; to be 
known in itself, it must be known as actual, now existent, present. 
But the object of memory is past — not present, not now existent, 
not actual ; it can not therefore be known in itself. If known at 
all, it must be known in something different from itself; i. e. 
mediately; and memory as an " immediate knoivledge of the 
past" is thus impossible. Again: memory is an act of knowl- 
edge; an act exists only as present; and a present knowledge 
can be immediately cognisant only of a present object. But the 



56 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

object known in memory is past ; consequently, either memory is 
not an act of knowledge at all, or the object immediately known 
is present; and the past, if known, is known only through the 
medium of the present ; on either alternative memory is not "an 
immediate knowledge of the past." Thus, memory, like our other 
faculties, affords only an immediate knowledge of the present; 
and, like them, is nothing more than consciousness variously 
modified. 1 

In regard to Perception : Reid allows an immediate knowledge 
of the affections of the subject of thought, mind, or self, and an 
immediate knowledge of the qualities of an object really different 
from self — matter. To the former, he gives the name of con- 
sciousness, to the latter, that of perception. Is consciousness, as 
an immediate knowledge, purely subjective, not to be discrimin- 
ated from perception, as an immediate knowledge, really objective ? 
A logical difference we admit ; a psychological we deny. 

Relatives are known only together : the science of opposites is 
one. Subject and object, mind and matter, are known only in 
correlation and contrast — and by the same common act: while 
knowledge, as at once a synthesis and an antithesis of both, may 
be indifferently defined an antithetic synthesis, or a synthetic 
antithesis of its terms. Every conception of self, necessarily in- 
volves a conception of not-self: every perception of what is dif- 
ferent from me, implies a recognition of the percipient subject 
in contradistinction from the object perceived. In one act of 
knowledge, indeed, the object is the prominent element, in an- 
other the subject; but there is none in which either is known 
out of relation to the other. The immediate knowledge which 
Reid allows of things different from the mind, and the immediate 
knowledge of the mind itself, can not therefore be split into two 
distinct acts. In perception, as in the other faculties, the same 
indivisible consciousness is conversant about both terms of the 



1 The only parallel we know to this misconception of Reid's is the opinion on which 
Fromondus animadverts. " In primis displicet nobis plurimorum recentiorum philosc- 
phia, qui sensuum interiorum operationes, ut phantasiationern. memorationem, et re- 
miniscentiam, circa imagines, recenter aut olim spiritibus vel cerebro impressas, versari 
negant ; scd proxime circa objecta qua foris sunt. Ut cum quis meminit se vidisse 
leporem currentem ; memoria, inquiunt, non intuetur et attingit imaginem leporis in 
cerebro asservatam, sed soaim leporem ipsum qui cursu irajicicbat campum, &c. &c." 
(P/tilosophia Christiana dc Anima. Lovanii, 1649. L. iii. c. 8. art. 8.) Who the 
advocates of this opinion were, we are ignorant ; but more than suspect that, as stated, 
it is only a misrepresentation of the Cartesian doctrine, then on the ascendant. [Lord 
Monboddo has, however, a doctrine of the sort.] 



CONSCIOUSNESS. 57 

relation of knowledge. Distinguish the cognition of the suhject 
from the cognition of the object of perception, and you either 
annihilate the relation of knowledge itself, which exists only in 
its terms being comprehended together in the unity of conscious- 
ness ; or you must postulate a higher faculty, which shall again 
reduce to one the two cognitions you have distinguished — that is, 
you are at last compelled to admit, in an unphilosophical com- 
plexity, that common consciousness of suhject and object, which 
you set out with denying in its philosophical simplicity. Con- 
sciousness and immediate knowledge are thus terms universally 
convertible ; and if there be an immediate knowledge of things 
external, there is consequently the consciousness of an outer world. 1 

Reid's erroneous analysis of consciousness is not perhaps of so 
much importance in itself, as from causing confusion in its con- 
sequences. Had he employed this term as tantamount to imme- 
diate knowledge in general, whether of self or not, and thus dis- 
tinctly expressed what he certainly [?] taught, that mind and 
matter are both equally known to us as existent and in themselves ; 
Dr. Brown could hardly have so far misconceived his doctrine, as 
actually to lend him the very opinion which his whole philosophy 
was intended to refute, viz. that an immediate, and consequently 
a real, knowledge of external things is impossible. But this by 
anticipation. 

This leads us to the second error — the non-distinction of repre- 

1 How correctly Aristotle reasoned on this subject, may be seen from the following 
passage: "When we perceive (aladavofieda" — the Greeks, perhaps fortunately, had 
no special term for consciousness) — "when we perceive that we see, hear, &c, it is 
necessary, that by sight itself we perceive that we see, or by another sense. If by 
another sense, then this also must be a sense of sight, conversant equally about the 
object of sight, color. Consequently, there must either be two senses of the same 
object, or every sense must be percipient of itself. Moreover, if the sense percipient 
of sight be different from sight itself, it follows, either that there is a regress to infinity, 
or we must admit, at last, some sense percipient of itself ; but if so, it is more reason- 
able to admit this in the original sense at once." (De Anima, L. iii. c. 2, text. 136.) 
Here Aristotle ought not to be supposed to mean that every sense is an independent 
faculty of perception, and, as such, conscious of itself. Compare De Som. et Vig. c. 
2, and Probl. (if indeed his) sect. xi. § 33. His older commentators — Alexander, 
Themistius, Simplicius — follow their master. Philoponus and Michael Ephesius de- 
sert his doctrine, and attribute this self-consciousness to a peculiar faculty which they 
call Attention (to irpoosKTinov.) This is the earliest example we know of this false 
analysis, which, when carried to the last absuidity, has given us consciousness, and 
attention, and reflection, as distinct powers. Of the schoolmen, satius est silere, quam 
parum dicerc. Nemesius, and Plutarchus of Athens preserved by Philoponus, accord 
this reflex consciousness to intellect as opposed to sense. Plato varies in his Theastetus 
and Charmides. [Some, however, of the Greek commentators on Aristotle, as I have 
elsewhere observed, introduced the term ^vvai<r&r)cris, employing it, by extension, for 
consciousness in general.] 



58 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

sentative from preservative or intuitive knowledge. 1 The reduc- 
tion of consciousness to a special faculty involved this confusion. 
For had Reid perceived that all our faculties are only conscious- 
ness, and that consciousness as an immediate knowledge is only 
of the present and actual, he would also have discovered that the 
past and possible either could not be known to us at all, or could 
be known only in and through the present and actual — i. e. me- 
diatcly. But a mediate knowledge is necessarily a representative 
knowledge. For if the present, or actual in itself, makes known 
to us the past and possible through itself, this can only be done 
by a vicarious substitution or representation. And as the knowl- 
edge of the past is given in memory (using that term in its vulgar 
universality), and that of the possible in imagination, these two 
faculties are powers of representative knowledge. Memory is an 
immediate knowledge of a present thought, involving an absolute 
belief that this thought represents another act of knowledge that 
has been. Imagination (which we use in its widest signification, 
to include conception or simple apprehension) is an immediate 
knowledge of an actual thought, which, as not subjectively self- 
contradictory (i. e. logically possible), involves the hypothetical 
belief that it objectively may be (i. e. is really possible). 

Nor is philosophy here at variance with nature. The learned 
and unlearned agree, that in memory and imagination, naught of 
which we are conscious lies beyond the sphere of self, and that 
in these acts the object known is only relative to a reality sup- 
posed to be. Nothing but Reid's superstitious horror of the ideal 
theory could have blinded him so far as not to see that these 
faculties are, of necessity, mediate and representative. In this, 
however, he not only over-shot the truth, but almost frustrated 
his whole philosophy. For he thus affords a ground (and the only 
ground, though not perceived by Brown), on which it could be ar- 
gued that his doctrine of perception was not intuitive — was notpre- 
sentative. For if he reject the doctrine of ideas not less in mem- 
ory and imagination, which must be representative faculties, than 
in perception, which may be intuitive, and if he predicate imme- 
diate knowledge equally of all ; — it can plausibly be contended, 
in favor of Brown's conclusion, that Reid did not really intend to 
allow a proper intuitive or presentative perception, and that he 
only abusively gave the name of immediate knowledge to the 



1 [See Dissertations on Reid, p. 804-815.] 



RE PRE SENT ATIVE AND PRESENTATIVE KNOWLEDGE. 59 

simplest form of the representative theory, in contradistinction 
to the more complex. But this also by anticipation. 

There exists, therefore, a distinction of knowledge — as imme- 
diate, intuitive, or presentative, and as mediate or representative. 
The former is logically simple, as only contemplative : the latter 
logically complex, as Loth representative, and contemplative of 
the representation. In the one, the object is single, and the word 
univocal : in the other it is double, and the term equivocal ; the 
object known and representing, being different from the object 
unknown and represented. The knowledge in an intuitive act, 
as convertible with existence, is assertory ; and the reality of its 
only object is given unconditionally, as & fact: the knowledge in 
a representative act, as not convertible with existence, is problem- 
atical; and the reality of its principal object is given hypothet- 
ically, as an inference. Representative knowledge is purely sub- 
jective, for its object known is always ideal ; presentative may 
be either subjective or objective, for its one object may be either 
ideal or material. Considered in themselves : an intuitive cogni- 
tion is complete, as absolute and irrespective of aught beyond 
the compass of knowledge ; a representative incomplete, as rela- 
tive to a transcendent something, beyond the sphere of conscious- 
ness. Considered in relation to their objects: the former is com- 
plete, its object being known and real ; the latter incomplete, its 
object known, being unreal, and its real object unknown. Con- 
sidered in relation to each other: immediate knowledge is com- 
plete, as all-sufficient in itself; mediate incomplete, as realized 
only through the other. 1 

So far there is no difficulty, or ought to have been none. The 
past and possible can only be known mediately by representa- 
tion. But a more arduous, at least a more perplexed, question 



1 This distinction of intuitive or presentative and of representative knowledge, over- 
looked, or rather abolished, in the theories of modern philosophy, is correspondent to 
the division of knowledge by certain of the schoolmen, into intuitive and abstractive. 
By the latter term, they also expressed abstract knowledge in its present signification. 
" Cognitio intuitiva," says the Doctor Resolutissimus, " est ilia qua? immediate tendit 
ad rem sibi prccscntem objective, secundum ejus actualem existentiam ; sicut cum video 
colorem existentem in pariete, vel rosam, quam in manu teneo. Abslractiva, dicitur 
omnis cognitio, quaj habetur de re non sic realitcr prcesente in ratione, objecti imme- 
diate cogniti." Now, when with a knowledge of this distinction of which Reid was 
ignorant, and rejecting equally with him not only species, but a representative per- 
ception, we say that many of the schoolmen have, in this respect, left behind them all 
modern philosophers ; we assert a paradox, but one which we are easily able to prove. 
Leibnitz spoke truly, when he said : ''Aurum latere in stercore illo scholastico bar- 
bariei." [See Diss, on Reid, pp. 804-815] 



60 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

arises, when we ask : Is all knowledge of the present or actual 
intuitive ? Is the know-ledge of mind and matter equally im- 
mediate ? 

In regard to the immediate knowledge of mind, there is now at 
least no difficulty ; it is admitted not to be representative. The 
problem, therefore, exclusively regards the intuitive perception 
of the qualities of matter. 

(To obviate misapprehension, we may here parenthetically ob- 
serve, that all we do intuitively know of self — all that we may 
intuitively know of not-self, is only relative. Existence absolute- 
ly and in itself, is to us as zero ; and while nothing is, so nothing 
is known to us, except those phases of being which stand in 
analogy to our faculties of knowledge. These we call qualities, 
phenomena, -properties, &c. "When we say, therefore, that a thing 
is known in itself, we mean only, that it stands face to face, in 
direct and immediate relation to the conscious mind ; in other 
words, that, as existing, its phenomena form part of the circle 
of our knowledge — exist, since they are known, and are known, 
because they exist.) 

If we interrogate consciousness concerning the point in ques- 
tion, the response is categorical and clear. When I concentrate 
my attention in the simplest act of perception, I return from my 
observation with the most irresistible conviction of two facts, or 
rather, two branches of the same fact ; — that I am — and that 
something different from me exists. In this act, I am conscious 
of myself as the perceiving subject, and of an external reality as 
the object perceived ; and I am conscious of both existences in 
the same indivisible moment of intuition. The knowledge of the 
subject does not precede nor follow the knowledge of the object ; 
— neither determines, neither is determined by, the other. The 
two terms of correlation stand in mutual counterpoise and equal 
independence ; they are given as connected in the synthesis of 
knowledge, but as contrasted in the antithesis of existence. 

Such is the fact of perception revealed in consciousness, and 
as it determines mankind in general in their equal assurance of 
the reality of an external world, and of the existence of their own 
minds. Consciousness declares our knowledge of material quali- 
ties to be intuitive. Nor is the fact, as given, denied even by 
those who disallow its truth. So clear is the deliverance, that 
even the philosophers (as we shall hereafter see) who reject an 
intuitive perception, find it impossible not to admit, that their 



SIX SCHEMES OF PERCEPTION AND OF PHILOSOPHY. 61 

doctrine stands decidedly opposed to the voice of consciousness 
and the natural conviction of mankind. [This doctrine is, how- 
ever, to be asserted, only in subordination to the distinction of 
the Primary, Secundo-primary and Secondary Qualities of Mat- 
ter. See Diss, on Reid, p. 845-874.] 

According as the truth of the fact of consciousness in percep- 
tion is entirely accepted, accepted in part, or wholly rejected, six 
possible and actual systems of philosophy result. We say ex- 
plicitly — the truth of the fact. For the fact, as a phenomenon 
of consciousness, can not be doubted ; since to doubt that we are 
conscious of this or that, is impossible. The doubt, as itself a 
phenomenon of consciousness, would annihilate itself. [See Diss. 
on Reid, p. 816-819.] 

1. If the veracity of consciousness be unconditionally admit- 
ted — if the intuitive knowledge of mind and matter, and the 
consequent reality of their antithesis be taken as truths, to be 
explained if possible, but in themselves are held as paramount 
to all doubt, the doctrine is established which we would call the 
scheme of Natural Realism or Natural Dualism. — 2. If the ve- 
racity of consciousness be allowed to the equipoise of the object 
and subject in the act, but rejected as to the reality of their an- 
tithesis, the system of Absolute Identity emerges, which reduces 
both mind and matter to phenomenal modifications of the same 
common substance. — 3 and 4. If the testimony of consciousness 
be refused to the co-originality and reciprocal independence of 
the subject and object, two schemes are determined, according 
as the one or the other of the terms is placed as the original and 
genetic. Is the object educed from the subject, Idealism; is the 
subject educed from the object, Materialism, is the result. — 5. 
Again, is the consciousness itself recognized only as a phenom- 
enon, and the substantial reality of both subject and object de- 
nied, the issue is Nihilism. 

6. These systems are all conclusions from an original inter- 
pretation of the fact of consciousness in perception, carried in- 
trepidly forth to its legitimate issue. But there is one scheme, 
which, violating the integrity of this fact, and, with the complete 
idealist, regarding the object of consciousness in perception as 
only a modification of the percipient subject, or, at least, a phe- 
nomenon numerically different from the object it represents — 
endeavors, however, to stop short of the negation of an external 
world, the reality of which, and the knowledge of whose reality, 



62 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

it seeks by various hypotheses, to establish and explain. This 
scheme, which we would term Cosmothetic Idealism, Hypothet- 
ical Realism, or Hypothetical Dualism — although the most in- 
consequent of all systems, has been embraced, under various 
forms, by the immense majority of philosophers. 

Of these systems, Dr. Brown adheres to the last. He holds 
that the mind is conscious or immediately cognizant of nothing 
beyond its subjective states; but he assumes the existence of an 
external world beyond the sphere of consciousness, exclusively on 
the ground of our irresistible belief in its unknown reality. In- 
dependent of this belief, there is no reasoning on which the exist- 
ence of matter can be vindicated ; the logic of the idealist he ad- 
mits to be unassailable. 

But Brown not only embraces the scheme of hypothetical real- 
ism himself, he never suspects that Reid entertained any other 
doctrine. Brown's transmutation of Reid from a natural to a 
hypothetical realist, as a misconception of the grand and dis- 
tinctive tenet of a school, by one even of its disciples, is without 
a parallel in the whole history of philosophy : and this portentous 
error is prolific ; chimmra chimceram parit. Were the evidence 
of the mistake less unambiguous, we should be disposed rather to 
question our own perspicacity, than to tax so subtle an intellect 
with so gross a blunder. 

Before establishing against his antagonist the true opinion of 
Reid, it- will be proper first to generalize the possible forms, under 
which the hypothesis of a representative perception can be realized, 
as a confusion of some of these as actually held, on the part both 
of Reid and Brown, has tended to introduce no small confusion 
into the discussion. 

The hypothetical realist contends, that he is wholly ignorant 
of things in themselves, and that these are known to him, only 
through a vicarious phenomenon, of which he is conscious in per- 
ception ; 

" Rerumqae ignarus, Imagine gaudet." 

In other words, that the object immediately known and represent- 
ing is numerically different from the object really existing and 
represented. Now this vicarious phenomenon, or immediate ob- 
ject, must either be numerically different from the percipient 
intellect, or a modification of that intellect itself. If the latter, 
it must, again, either be a modification of the thinking substance, 



REID'S DOCTRINE OF PERCEPTION. 63 

with a transcendent existence beyond the act of thought, or a 
modification identical with the act of perception itself. 

All possible forms of the representative hypothesis are thus 
reduced to three, and these have all been actually maintained. 

1. The representative object not a modification of mind. 

2. The representative object a modification of mind, dependent 
for its apprehension, but not for its existence, on the act of con- 
sciousness. 

3. The representative object a modification of mind, non-exist- 
ent out of consciousness ; — the idea and its perception only dif- 
ferent relations of an act {state) really identical. 

In the first, the various opinions touching the nature and origin 
of the representative object ; whether material, immaterial, or be- 
tween both ; whether physical or hyperphysical ; whether propa- 
gated from the external object or generated in the medium ; wheth- 
er fabricated by the intelligent soul, or in the animal life ; whether 
infused by Grod, or angels, or identical with the divine substance : 
— these afford in the history of philosophy so many subordinate 
modifications of this form of the hypothesis. — In the two latter, the 
subaltern theories have been determined by the difficulty to con- 
nect the representation with the reality, in a relation of causal 
dependence ; and while some philosophers have left it altogether 
unexplained, the others have been compelled to resort to the hy- 
perphysical theories of divine assistance and a pre-established har- 
mony. — Under the second, opinions have varied, whether the repre- 
sentative object be innate or factitious. [See Diss. p. 817-819.] 

The third of these forms of representation Reid does not seem 
to have understood. The illusion which made him view, in his 
doctrine, memory and imagination as powers of immediate knowl- 
edge, though only representative faculties, under the third form, 
has, in the history of opinions regarding perception, puzzled him, 
as we shall see, in his exposition of the doctrine of Arnauld. He 
was not aware that there was a theory, neither identical with an 
intuitive perception, nor with the first or second form of the repre- 
sentative hypothesis ; with both of which he was sufficiently ac- 
quainted.— Dr. Brown, on the contrary, who adopts the third and 
simplest modification of that hypothesis, appears ignorant of its 
discrimination from the second; and accordingly views the phi- 
losophers who held this latter form, as not distinguished in opin- 
ion from himself. Of the doctrine of intuition he does not seem 
almost to have conceived the possibility. 



64 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

These being premised, we proceed to consider the greatest of 
all Brown's errors, in itself and in its consequences — his miscon- 
ception of the cardinal position of Reid's philosophy, in supposing 
that philosopher as a hypothetical realist, to hold with himself the 
third form of the representative hypothesis, and not, as a natural 
realist, the doctrine of an intuitive perception. We are compelled 
to be brief; and to complete the evidence of the following proof 
(if more indeed be required), we must beg our readers, interested 
in the question, to look up the passages, to which we are able 
only to refer. [See Diss, on Reid, p. 819-824. The pages of the 
original editions here referred to are there marked.] 

In the first place, knowledge and existence are then only con- 
vertible when the reality is known in itself '; for then only can 
we say, that it is known because it exists, and exists since it is 
known. And this constitutes an immediate, presentative, or in- 
tuitive cognition, rigorously so called. — Nor did Reid contemplate 
any other. " It seems admitted," he says, " as a first principle, 
by the learned and the unlearned, that what is really perceived 
must exist, and that to perceive what does not exist is impossible. 
So far the unlearned man and the philosopher agree." — (Essays 
on the Intellectual Powers, p. 142.) 

In the second place, philosophers agree, that the idea or repre- 
sentative object in their theory, is in the strictest sense immedi- 
ately perceived. — And so Reid understands them. " I perceive 
not," says the Cartesian, "the external object itself;" (so far he 
agrees with the Peripatetic, and differs from the unlearned man;) 
" but I perceive an image, or form, or idea, in my own mind, or 
in my brain. / am certain of the existence of the idea,; because 
I immediately perceive it." (L. c.) 

In the third place, philosophers concur in acknowledging, that 
mankind at large believe, that the external reality itself consti- 
tutes the immediate and only object of perception. — So also Reid. 
" On the same principle, the unlearned man says, I perceive the 
external object, and I perceive it to exist." (L. c.) — " The vul- 
gar undoubtedly believe, that it is the external object which we 
immediately perceive, and not a representative image of it only. 
It is for this reason, that they look upon it as perfect lunacy to 
call in question the existence of external objects." (L. c.) — " The 
vulgar are firmly persuaded, that the very identical objects which 
they perceive continue to exist when they do not perceive them ; 
and are no less firmly persuaded, that when ten men look at the 



BROWN'S ARGUMENT FOR REID'S REPRESENTATION. 65 

sun or the moon they all see the same individual object" (P. 
166.)— Speaking of Berkeley: "The vulgar opinion he reduces 
to this, that the very things which we ■perceive by our senses do 
really exist. This he grants. (P. 165) — " It is, therefore, ac- 
knowledged by this philosopher (Hume) to be a natural instinct 
or prepossession, an universal and primary opinion of all men, 
that the objects which we immediately perceive, by our senses, 
are not images in our minds, but external objects, and that their 
existence is independent of us and our perception." (P. 201. 
See also pp. 143, 198, 199, 200, 206.) 

In these circumstances, if Reid : either 1°, — maintains, that 
his immediate perception of external things is convertible with 
their reality ; or 2°, — asserts that, in his doctrine of perception, 
the external reality stands, to the percipient mind, face to face, 
in the same immediacy of relation which the idea holds in the 
representative theory of the philosophers ; or 3°, — declares the 
identity of his own opinion with the vulgar belief, as thus ex- 
pounded by himself and the philosophers : — he could not more 
emphatically proclaim himself a natural realist, and his doctrine 
of perception, as intended, at least, a doctrine of intuition. And 
he does all three. 

The first and second. — " We have before examined the reasons 
given by philosophers to prove that ideas, and not external ob- 
jects, are the immediate objects of perception. We shall only 
here observe, that if external objects be perceived immediate- 
ly," [and he had just before asserted for the hundredth time that 
they were so perceived] " we have the same reason to believe 

THEIR EXISTENCE, AS PHILOSOPHERS HAVE TO BELIEVE THE EXISTENCE 
OF IDEAS, WHILE THEY HOLD THEM TO BE THE IMMEDIATE OBJECTS OF 

perception." (P. 589. See also pp. 118, 138.) 

The third. — Speaking of the perception of the external world — ■ 
" We have here a remarkable conflict between two contradictory 
opinions, wherein all mankind are engaged. On the one side 
stand all the vulgar, who are unpracticed in philosophical re- 
searches, and guided by the uncorrupted primary instincts of 
nature. On the other side, stand all the philosophers, ancient 
and modern; every man, without exception, who reflects. In this 
division, to my great humiliation, I FIND myself classed with 

THE VULGAR." (P. 207.) 

Various other proofs of the same conclusion, could be adduced; 
these for brevity we omit. — Brown's interpretation of the funda- 

E 



66 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

mental tenet of Reid's philosophy is, therefore, not a simple mis- 
conception, but an absolute reversal of its real and even unambi- 
guous import. • [This is too strong. See Diss. p. 820.] 

But the ground, on which Brown vindicates his interpretation, 
is not unworthy of the interpretation itself. The possibility of 
an intuition beyond the sphere of self, he can hardly be said to 
have contemplated ; but on one occasion, Reid's language seems, 
for a moment, to have actually suggested to him the question: 
— Might that philosopher not possibly regard the material object, 
as identical with the object of consciousness in perception? — On 
what ground does he reject the affirmative as absurd ? His rea- 
soning is to this effect: — To assert an intuitive perception of 
matter, is to assert an identity of matter and mind [for an im- 
mediacy of knoivledge is convertible ivith a unity of existence) ; 
But Reid was a sturdy dualist ; Therefore, he could not main- 
tain an immediate perception of the qualities of matter. (Lcct. 
xxv. pp. 159, 160.) In this syllogism, the major is a mere peti- 
tio principii, which Brown has not attempted to prove; and 
which, as tried by the standard of all philosophical truth, is not 
only false, but even the converse of trie truth ; while, admitting 
its accuracy, it can not be so connected with the minor, as to 
legitimate the conclusion. 

If we appeal to consciousness, consciousness gives, even in the 
last analysis — in the unity of knowledge, a duality of existence ; 
and peremptorily falsifies Brown's assumption, that not-self, as 
known, is identical ivith self as knowing. Reid therefore, as a 
dualist, and on the supreme authority of consciousness, might 
safely maintain the immediacy of perception ; — nay, as a dualist. 
Reid coidd not, consistently, have adopted the opinion which 
Brown argues, that, as a dualist, he must be regarded to have 
held. Mind and matter exist to us only in their qualities ; and 
these qualities exist to us only as they are known by us, i. e. as 
phenomena. It is thus merely from knoivledge that we can infer 
existence, and only from the supposed repugnance or compatibility 
of phenomena, within our experience, are we able to ascend to the 
transcendent difference or identity of substances. Now, on the 
hypothesis that all we immediately know, is only a state or mo- 
dification or quality or phenomenon of the cognitive subject itself 
— how can we contend, that the phenomena of mind and matter, 
known only as modifications of the same, must be the modifica- 
tions of different substances ; — nay, that only on this hypothesis 



BROWN'S ARGUMENT DISPROVED. 67 

of their substantial unity in knowledge, can their substantial 
duality in existence be maintained ? But of this again. 

Brown's assumption has no better foundation than the exagge- 
ration of a crotchet of philosophers ; which, though contrary to 
the evidence of consciousness, and consequently not only without 
but against all evidence, has yet exerted a more extensive and 
important influence, than any principle in the whole history of 
philosophy. This subject deserves a volume ; we can only afford 
it a few sentences. Some philosophers (as Anaxagoras, Heracli- 
tus, Alcmseon) maintained that knowledge implied even a con- 
trariety of subject and object. But since the time of Empedocles, 
no opinion has been more universally admitted, than that the 
relation of knowledge inferred the analogy of existence. This 
analogy may be supposed in two potences. What knows and 
what is known, are either, 1°, similar, or, 2°, the same ; and if 
the general principle be true, the latter is the more philosophical. 
This principle it was, which immediately determined the whole 
doctrine of a representative perception. Its lower potence is seen 
in the intentional species of the schools, and in the ideas of 
Mallebranche and Berkeley ; its higher in the gnostic reasons of 
the Platonists, in the pre-existing species of Avicenna and the 
Arabians, in the ideas of Descartes and Leibnitz, in the pheno- 
mena of Kant, and in the external states of Dr. Brown. It me- 
diately determined the hierarchical gradation of faculties or 
souls of the Aristotelians — the vehicular media of the Platonists 
— the theories of a common intellect of Alexander, Themistius, 
Averroes, Cajetanus, and Zabarella — the vision in the deity of 
Mallebranche — and the Cartesian and Leibnitian doctrines of 
assistance, and predetermined harmony. To no other origin is 
to be ascribed the refusal of the fact of consciousness in its prim- 
itive duality ; and the unitarian systems of identity, material- 
ism, idealism, are the result. 

But however universal and omnipotent this principle may have 
been, Reid was at once too ignorant of opinions, to be much in 
danger from authority, and too independent a thinker, to accept 
so baseless a fancy as a fact. " Mr. Norris," says he, " is the 
only author I have met with who professedly puts the question, 
Whether material things can be perceived by us immediately? 
He has offered four arguments to show that they can not. First, 
Material objects are without the mind, and therefore there can 
be no union between the object and the percipient. Answer — 



68 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

This argument is lame, until it'is shown to be necessary, that in 
perception there should be an union between the object and the 
percipient. Second, material objects are disproportioned to the 
wind, and removed from it by the ivhole diameter of Being. — 
This argument I can not answer, because I do not understand it." 
(Essays, I. P. p. 202.) 

The principle, that the relation of knowledge implies an anal- 
ogy of existence, admitted without examination in almost every 
school, but which Reid, with an ignorance wiser than knowl- 
edge, confesses he does not understand ; is nothing more than 
an irrational attempt to explain, what is, in itself, inexplicable. 
How the similar or the same is conscious of itself, is not a whit 
less inconceivable, than how one contrary is immediately perci- 
pient of another. It at best only removes our admitted ignorance 
by one step back ; and then, in place of our knowledge simply 
originating from the incomprehensible, it ostentatiously departs 
from the absurd. 

The slightest criticism is sufficient to manifest the futility of 
that hypothesis of representation, which Brown would substitute 
for Reid's presentative perception ; — although this hypothesis, 
under various modifications, be almost coextensive with the his- 
tory of philosophy. In fact, it fulfills none of the conditions of a 
legitimate hypothesis. 

In the first place, it is unnecessary. — It can not show, that the 
fact of an intuitive perception, as given in consciousness, ought 
not to be accepted ; it is unable therefore to vindicate its own 
necessity, in order to explain the possibility of our knowledge of 
external things. That we can not show forth, how the mind is 
capable of knowing something different from self, is no reason to 
doubt that it is so capable. Every how (Score) rests ultimately 
on a that (on) ; every demonstration is deduced from something 
given and indemonstrable; all that is comprehensible, hangs 
from some revealed fact, which we must believe as actual, but, 
can not construe to the reflective intellect in its possibility. In 
consciousness — in the original spontaneity of intelligence (vov$, 
locus principiorum), are revealed the primordial facts of our in- 
telligent nature. Consciousness is the fountain of all compre- 
hensibility and illustration ; but as such, can not be itself illus- 
trated or comprehended. To ask how any fact of consciousness 
is possible, is to ask how consciousness itself is possible ; and to 
ask how consciousness is possible, is to ask how a being intelli- 



BJEPRESENTATIONISM NOT A LEGITIMATE HYPOTHESIS. 69 

gent like man is possible. Could we answer this, the Serpent- 
had not tempted Eve by an hyperbole: — "We should be as 
Gods." But as we did not create ourselves, and are not even in 
the secret of our creation, we must take our existence, our 
knowledge upon trust : and that philosophy is the only true, be- 
cause in it alone can truth be realized, which does not revolt 
against the authority of our natural beliefs. 

" The voice of Nature is the voice of God." 

To ask, therefore, a reason for the possibility of our intuition of 
external things, above the fact of its reality, as given in our per- 
ceptive consciousness, betrays, as Aristotle has truly said, an 
imbecility of the reasoning principle itself: — "Tovrov tftreiv 
\6<yov, a<f>6vras rrjv aiardrjacv, appcoarta t/<? iari hiavoias." The 
natural realist who accepts this intuition, can not, certainly, 
explain it, because, as ultimate, it is a fact inexplicable. Yet, 
with Hudibras : 

" He knows what's what; and that's as high 
As metaphysic wit can fly." 

But the hypothetical realist — the cosmothetic idealist, who rejects 
a consciousness of aught beyond the mind, can not require of the 
natural realist an explanation of how such a consciousness is 
possible, until he himself shall have explained, what is even less 
conceivable, the possibility of representing- (i. e. of knowing) the 
unknown. Till then, each founds on the incomprehensible ; but 
the former admits the veracity, the latter postulates the falsehood 
of that principle, which can alone confer on this incomprehensi- 
ble foundation the character of truth. The natural realist, whose 
watchword is — The facts of consciousness, the whole facts, and 
nothing but the facts, has therefore naught to fear from his anta- 
gonist, so long as consciousness can not be explained nor redar- 
gued from without. If his system be to fall, it falls only with 
philosophy ; for it can only be disproved, by proving the menda- 
city of consciousness — -of that faculty, 

" Queb nisi sit veri, ratio quoque falsa fit omnis ;" 
(" Which unless true, all reason turns a lie.") 

This leads us to the second violation of the laws of a legitimate 
hypothesis ; — the doctrine of a representative perception annihi- 
lates itself, in subverting the universal edifice of knowledge. — 
Belying the testimony of consciousness to our immediate percep- 
tion of an outer world, it belies the veracity of consciousness 



70 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

altogether. But the truth of consciousness, is the condition of 
the possibility of all knowledge. The first act of hypothetical 
realism, is thus an act of suicide ; philosophy, thereafter, is at 
best but an enchanted corpse, awaiting only the exorcism of the 
skeptic, to relapse into its proper nothingness. — But of this we 
shall have occasion to treat at large, in exposing Brown's mis- 
prision of the argument from common sense. 

In the third place, it is the condition of a legitimate hypothe- 
sis, that the fact or facts for which it is excogitated to account, 
be not themselves hypothetical. — But so far is the principal fact, 
which the hypothesis of a representative perception is proposed 
to explain, from being certain ; its reality is even rendered prob- 
lematical by the proposed explanation itself. The facts, about 
which this hypothesis is conversant, are two ; — the fact of the 
mental modification, and the fact of the material reality. The 
problem to be solved is their connection ; and the hypothesis of 
representation is advanced, as the ratio of their correlation, in 
supposing that the former as knoivn is vicarious of the latter as 
existing. There is, however, here a see-saw between the hypothe- 
sis and the fact : the fact is assumed as an hypothesis ; and the 
hypothesis explained as a fact ; each is established, each is 
expounded, by the other. To account for the possibility of an 
unknown external world, the hypothesis of representation is de- 
vised ; and to account for the possibility of representation, we 
imagine the hypothesis of an external world. Nothing could be 
more easy than to demonstrate, that on this supposition, the fact 
of the external reality is not only petitory but improbable. This, 
however, we are relieved from doing, by Dr. Brown's own admis- 
sion, that " the skeptical argument for the non-existence of an 
external world, as a mere play of reasoning, admits of no reply ;" 
and we shall afterward prove, that the only ground on which he 
attempts to vindicate this existence (the ground of our natural 
belief in its reality), is one, not competent to the hypothetical 
realist. "VVe shall see, that if this belief be true, the hypothesis 
itself is superseded ; if false, that there is no fact for the hypo- 
thesis to explain. 

In the, fourth place, a legitimate hypothesis must account for 
the phenomenon, about which it is conversant, adequately and 
without violence, in all its dependencies, relations, and peculiari- 
ties. — But the hypothesis in question, only accomplishes its end 
— nay only vindicates its utility, by a mutilation, or, more prop- 



REPRESENTAT10NISM NOT A LEGITIMATE HYPOTHESIS. 71 

<srly, by the destruction and re-creation, of the very phenome- 
non for the nature of which it would account. The entire phe- 
nomenon to be explained by the supposition of a representative, 
perception, is the fact, given in consciousness, of the immediate 
knowledge or intuition of an existence different from self This 
simple phenomenon it hews down into two fragments ; into the 
existence and the intuition. The existence of external things, 
which is given only through their intuition, it admits ; the intu- 
ition itself, though the ratio cognoscendi, and to us therefore the 
ratio essendi of their reality, it rejects. But to annihilate what is. 
prior and constitutive in the phenomenon, is, in truth, to annihi- 
late the phenomenon altogether. The existence of an external 
world, which the hypothesis proposes to explain, is no longer even 
a truncated fact of consciousness ; for the existence given in con- 
sciousness, necessarily fell with the intuition on which it reposed. 
A representative perception, is therefore, an hypothetical ex- 
planation of a supposititious fact: it creates the nature it inter- 
prets. And in this respect, of all the varieties of the representa- 
tive hypothesis, the third, or that which views in the object 
known a modification of thought itself, most violently outrages 
the phenomenon of consciousness it would explain. And this is 
Brown's. The f erst, saves the phenomenon of consciousness in so 
far as it preserves always the numerical, if not always the sub- 
stantial, difference between the object perceived and the percipi- 
ent mind. The second, does not violate at least the antithesis of 
the object perceived and the percipient act. But in the third or 
simplest form of representation, not only is the object known, 
denied to be itself the reality existing, as consciousness attests j 
this object revealed as not-self, is identified with the mental ego; 
nay, even, though given as permanent, with the transient energy 
of thought itself. 

In the fifth place, the fact, which a legitimate hypothesis is 
devised to explain, must be within the sphere of experience. — The 
fact, however, for which that of a representative perception ac- 
counts (the existence of external things), transcends, ex hypothesi, 
all experience ; it is the object of no real knowledge, but a bare 
ens rationis — a mere hyperphysical chimera. 

In the sixth and last place, an hypothesis itself is probable in 
proportion as it works simply and naturally ; that is in propor- 
tion as it is dependent on no subsidiary hypothesis, and as it in- 
volves nothing, petitory, occult, supernatural, as an element of its 



72 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

explanation. In this respect, the doctrine of a representative per- 
ception is not less vicious than in others. To explain at all, it 
must not only postulate subsidiary hypotheses, but subsidiary 
miracles. — The doctrine in question attempts to explain the knowl- 
edge of an unknown world, by the ratio of a representative per- 
ception : but it is impossible by any conceivable relation, to apply 
the ratio to the facts. The mental modification, of which, on the 
doctrine of representation, we are exclusively conscious in percep- 
tion, either represents (i. e. affords a mediate knowledge of) a real 
external world, or it does not. (We say only the reality ; to in- 
clude all systems from Kant's, who does not predicate even an 
existence in space and time of things in themselves, to Locke's, 
who supposes the trancendent reality to resemble its idea, at least 
in the primary qualities.) Now, the latter alternative is an 
affirmation of absolute Idealism; we have, therefore, at present 
only to consider the former. And here, the mind either knows 
the reality of what it represents, or it does not. — On the prior al- 
ternative, the hypothesis under discussion would annihilate itself, 
in annihilating the ground of its utility. For as the end of repre- 
sentation is knowledge ; and as the hypothesis of a representative 
perception is only required on the supposed impossibility of that 
presentative knowledge of external things, which consciousness 
affirms : — if the mind is admitted to be cognizant of the outer 
reality in itself, previous to representation, the end toward which 
the hypothesis was devised as a mean, has been already accom- 
plished ; and the possibility of an intuitive perception, as given 
in consciousness, is allowed. Nor is the hypothesis only absurd, 
as superfluous. It is worse. For the mind would, in this case, 
be supposed to know before it knew ; or, like the crazy Pentheus, 
to see its objects double — 

(" Et solem geminum ct duplices se ostendere Thebas :") 

and, if these absurdities be eschewed, then is the identity of mind 
and self — of consciousness and knowledge, abolished ; and my 
intellect knows, what / am not conscious of it knowing ! — The 
other alternative remains : — that the mind is blindly determined 
to represent, and truly to represent, the reality which it does not 
know. And here the mind either blindly determines itself, or is 
blindly determined by an extrinsic and intelligent cause. — The 
former lemma is the more philosophical, in so far as it assumes 
nothing hyperphysical ; but it is otherwise utterly irrational, in 



REPRESENTATIONISM NOT A LEGITIMATE HYPOTHESIS. 73 

as much as it would explain an effect, by a cause wholly inade- 
quate to its production. On this alternative, knowledge is sup- 
posed to be the effect of ignorance — intelligence of stupidity — 
life of death. We are necessarily ignorant, ultimately at least, of 
the mode in which causation operates ; but we know at least, that 
no effect arises without a cause — and a cause proportionate to its 
existence. — The absurdity of this supposition has accordingly 
constrained the profoundest cosmothetic idealists, notwithstanding 
their rational abhorrence of a supernatural assumption, to em- 
brace the second alternative. To say nothing of less illustrious 
schemes, the systems of Divine Assistance, of a Pre-established 
Harmony, and of the Vision of all things in the Deity, are only 
so many subsidiary hypotheses — so many attempts to bridge, by 
supernatural machinery, the chasm between the representation 
and the reality, which all human ingenuity had found, by natural 
means, to be insuperable. The hypothesis of a representative 
perception, thus presupposes a miracle to let it work. Dr. Brown, 
indeed, rejects as unphilosophical, those hyperphysical subsidies. 
But he only saw less clearly than their illustrious authors, the 
necessity which required them. It is a poor philosophy that 
eschews the Deus ex machina, and yet ties the knot which is only 
soluble by his interposition. It is not unphilosophical to assume 
a miracle, if a miracle be necessary ; but it is unphilosophical to 
originate the necessity itself. And here the hypothetical realist 
can not pretend, that the difficulty is of nature's, not of his crea- 
tion. In fact it only arises, because he has closed his eyes upon 
the light of nature, and refused the guidance of consciousness : 
but having swamped himself in following the ignis fatuus of a 
theory, he has no right to refer its private absurdities to the im- 
becility of human reason ; or to generalize his own factitious igno- 
rance, by a Quantum est quod nescimus! The difficulty of the 
problem Dr. Brown has not perceived ; or perceiving, has not 
ventured to state — far less attempted to remove. He has essayed, 
indeed, to cut the knot, which he was unable to loose ; but we 
shall find, in the sequel, that his summary postulate of the reality 
of an external world, on the ground of our belief in its existence, 
is, in his hands, of all unfortunate attempts, perhaps the most 
unsuccessful. 

The scheme of Natural Realism (which it is Reid's honor to 
have been the first, among not forgotten philosophers, virtually 
and intentionally, at least, to embrace) is thus the only system, on 



74 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

which the truth of consciousness and the possibility of knowledge 
can he vindicated ; while the Hypothetical Realist, in his effort 
to he "wise above knowledge," like the dog in the fable, loses 
the substance, in attempting to realize the shadow. " Les 
homines" (says Leibnitz, with a truth of which he was not him- 
self aware), " les hommes cherchent ce qu'ils savent, et ne savent 
pas ce quails cherchent." 

That the doctrine of an intuitive perception is not without its 
difficulties, we allow. But these do not affect its possibility ; and 
may in a great measure be removed by a more sedulous examin- 
ation of the phenomena. The distinction of perception proper 
from sensation proper, in other words, of the objective from the 
subjective in this act, Reid, after other philosophers, has already 
turned to good account ; but his analysis would have been still 
more successful, had he discovered the law which universally 
governs their manifestation : That Perception and Sensation, the 
objective and subjective, though both always co-existent, are al- 
ways in the inverse ratio of each other. But on this matter we 
can not at present enter. [See Diss. p. 876-885.] 

Dr. Brown is not only wrong in regard to Reid's own doctrine, 
he is wrong, even admitting his interpretation of that philosopher 
to be true, in charging him with a " series of wonderful miscon- 
ceptions," in regard to the opinions universally prevalent touch- 
ing the nature of ideas. We shall not argue the case upon the 
higher ground, that Reid, as a natural realist, could not be phi- 
losophically out, in assailing the hypothesis of a representative 
perception, even though one of its subordinate modifications 
might be mistaken by him for another ; but shall prove that, 
supposing Reid to have been like Brown, an hypothetical realist, 
under the third form of a representative perception, he was not 
historically wrong in attributing to philosophers in general (at 
least, after the decline of the Scholastic philosophy), the first or 
second variety of the hypothesis. Even on this lower ground, 
Brown is fated to be unsuccessful ; and if Reid be not always 
correct, his antagonist has failed in convicting him even of a sin- 
gle inaccuracy. We shall consider Brown's charge of misrepre- 
sentation in detail. 

It is always unlucky to stumble on the threshold. The para- 
graph (Lect. xxvii.) in which Dr. Brown opens his attack on Reid, 
contains more mistakes than sentences ; and the etymological dis- 
cussion it involves, supposes as true? what is not simply false, but 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 75 

diametrically opposite to the truth. — Among other errors : — In the 
first place, the term "idea" was never employed in any system, 
previous to the age of Lescartes, to denote " little images derived 
from objects without." In the second, it was never used in any 
philosophy, prior to the same period, to signify the immediate ob- 
ject of perception. In the third, it was not applied by the " Peri- 
patetics or Schoolmen," to express an object of human thought at 
all. 1 In the fourth, ideas (taking this term for species) were not 
" in all the dark ages of the scholastic followers of Aristotle," re- 
garded as " little images derived from without ;" for a numerous 

1 The history of the word idea seems completely unknown. Previous to the age of 
Descartes, as a philosophical term, it was employed exclusively by the Platonists — at 
least exclusively in a Platonic meaning ; and this meaning was precisely the reverse of 
that attributed to the word by Dr. Brown ; — the idea was not an object of perception — 
the idea was not derived from without. — In the schools, so far from being a current 
psychological expression, as he imagines, it had no other application than a theological. 
Neither, after the revival of letters, was the term extended by the Aristotelians even 
to the objects of intellect. Melancthon, indeed (who was a kind of semi-Platonist) uses 
it on one occasion as a synonyme for notion, or intelligible species (De Anima, p. 187, 
ed. 1555) ; but it was even to this solitary instance, we presume, that Julius Scaliger 
alludes (De Subtilitate, vi. 4), when he castigates such an application of the word as 
neoteric and abusive. " Melanch.'" is on the margin. Goclenius also probably founded 
his usage on Melanchthon. — We should have distinctly said, that previous to its employ- 
ment by Descartes himself, the expression had never been used as a comprehensive term 
for the immediate objects of thought, had we not in remembrance the Historia Anima 
Humana of our countryman David Buchanan. This work, originally written in French, 
had for some years been privately circulated previous to its publication at Paris in 1636. 
Here we find the word idea familiarly employed, in its most extensive signification, to 
express the objects, not only of intellect proper, but of memory, imagination, sense ; 
and this is the earliest example of such an employment. For the Discourse cm Method 
in which the term is usurped by Descartes in an equal latitude, was at least a year 
later in its publication — viz. in June, 1637. Adopted soon after also by Gassendi, the 
word under such imposing patronage gradually won its way into general use. In En- 
gland, however, Locke may be said to have been the first who naturalized the term in 
its Cartesian universality. Hobbes employs it, and that historically, only once or 
twice ; Henry More and Cudworth are very chary of it, even when treating of the 
Cartesian philosophy ; Willis rarely uses it ; while Lord Herbert, Reynolds, and the 
English philosophers in general, between Descartes and Locke, do not apply it psy- 
chologically at all. When in common language employed by Milton and Dryden, after 
Descartes, as before him, by Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare, Hooker, &c, the meaning 
is Platonic. Our lexicographers are ignorant of the difference. 

The fortune of this word is curious. Employed by Plato to express the real forms 
of the intelligible world, in lofty contrast to the unreal images of the sensible ; it was 
lowered by Descartes, who extended it to the objects of our consciousness in general. 
When, after Gassendi, the school of Oondillac had analyzed our highest faculties into 
our lowest, the idea was still more deeply degraded from its high original. Like a 
fallen angel, it was relegated from the sphere of divine intelligence, to the atmosphere 
of human sense ; till at last Ideologic (more correctly Iclealogie), a word which could 
only properly suggest an a priori scheme, deducing our knowledge from the intellect, 
has in France become the name peculiarly distinctive of that philosophy of mind 
which exclusively derives our knowledge from the senses. — Word and thing, ideas 
have been the crux philosophorum, since Aristotle sent them packing (^atpercoo-av 
iSe'ai) to the present day. 



76 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

party of the most illustrious .schoolmen rejected species, not only 
in the intellect, but in the sense. In the fifth, "phantasm" in 
"the old philosophy," was not the " external cause of perception" 
but the internal object of imagination. In the sixth, the term 
" shadowy film" which here and elsewhere he constantly uses, 
shows that Dr. Brown confounds the matterless species of the 
Peripatetics with the corporeal effluxions of Democritus and Ep- 
icurus : 

" Quce, quasi membrancE, summo de cortice rerum 
Dereptse, volitant ultro citroque per auras." 

Dr. Brown, in short, only fails in victoriously establishing 
against Reid the various meanings in which " the old writers?' 
employed the term idea, by the petty fact — that the old writers 
did not employ the term idea at all. 

Nor does the progress of the attack belie the omen of its outset, 
"We shall consider the philosophers quoted by Brown in chronol- 
ogical order. Of three of these only (Descartes, Arnauld, Locke), 
were the opinions particularly noticed by Reid ; the others (Hobbes, 
Le Clerc, Crousaz), Brown adduces as examples of Reid's general 
misrepresentation. Of the greater number of the philosophers 
specially criticised by Reid, Brown prudently says nothing. 

Of these, the first is Descartes; and in regard to him, Dr. 
Brown, not content with accusing Reid of simple ignorance, 
contends, "that the opinions of Descartes axe precisely opposite 
to the representations which he has given of them." (Lect. xxvii. 
p. l"/2.) — Now Reid states, in regard to Descartes, that this phi- 
losopher appears to place the idea or representative object in per- 
ception, sometimes in the mind, and sometimes in the brain; and 
he acknowledges that while these opinions seem to him contra- 
dictory, he is not prepared to pronounce which of them their 
author held, if he did not indeed hold both together. " Descartes," 
he says, " seems to have hesitated between the two opinions, or 
to have passed from one to the other." On any alternative, how- 
ever, Reid attributes to Descartes, either the first or the second 
form of representation. Now here we must recollect, that the 
question is not whether Reid be rigorously right, but whether 
he be inexcusably wrong. Dr. Brown accuses him of the most 
ignorant misrepresentation — of interpreting an author, whose per- 
spicuity he himself admits, in a sense " exactly the reverse" of 
truth. To determine what Descartes' doctrine of perception act- 
ually is, would be difficult, perhaps even impossible ; but in refer- 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG-. 77 

ence to the question at issue, certainly superfluous. It here suf- 
fices to show, that his opinion on this point is one mooted among 
his disciples ; and that Brown, wholly unacquainted with the dif- 
ficulties of the question, dogmatizes on the hasis of a single pas- 
sage — nay, of a passage in itself irrelevant. 

Reid is justified against Brown, if the Cartesian Idea be proved, 
either a material image in the brain, or an immaterial representa- 
tion in the mind, distinct from the percipient act. By those not 
possessed of the key to the Cartesian theory, there are many pas- 
sages 1 in the writings of its author, which, taken by themselves, 
might naturally be construed to import, that Descartes supposed 
the mind to be conscious of certain motions in the brain, to which, 
as well as to the modifications of the intellect itself, he applies the 
terms image and idea. Reid, who did not understand the Carte- 
sian philosophy as a system, was puzzled by these superficial ambi- 
guities. Not aware that the cardinal point of that system is — 
that mind and body, as essentially opposed, are naturally to each 
other as zero, and that their mutual intercourse can only be super- 
naturally maintained by the concourse of the Deity ; 2 Reid attrib- 
uted to Descartes the possible opinion that the soul is immediately 
cognizant of material images in the brain. But in the Cartesian 
theory, mind is only conscious of itself; the affections of body may, 
by the laio of union, be the proximate occasions, but can never 
constitute the immediate objects, of knowledge. Reid, however, 
supposing that nothing could obtain the name of image, which did 
not represent a prototype, or the name of idea which was not an 
object of thought, thus misinterpreted Descartes ; who applies, 
abusively indeed, these terms to the occasion of perception (i. e., 
the motion in the sensorium, unknoivn in itself and resembling 

1 Ex. gr. De Pass. § 35, — a passage stronger than any of those noticed by De la 
Forge. 

2 That the theory of Occasional Causes is necessarily involved in Descartes' doc- 
trine of Assistance, and that his explanation of the connection of mind and body 
reposes on that theory, it is impossible to doubt. For while he rejects all physical 
influence in the communication and conservation of motion between bodies, which he 
refers exclusively to the ordinary concourse of God (Princ. P. II. Art. 36, etc.) ; con- 
sequently he deprives conflicting bodies of all proper efficiency, and reduces them to 
the mere occasional causes of this phenomenon. But a fortiori, he must postulate the 
hypothesis, which he found necessary in explaining the intercourse of things substan 
tidily the same, to account for the reciprocal action of two substances, to him, of so 
incompatible a nature, as mind and body. De la Forge, Geulinx, Mallebranche, Corde- 
moi, and other disciples of Descartes, only explicitly evolve what the writings of their 
master implicitly contain. We may observe, though we can not stop to prove, that 
Tennemann is wrong in denying De la Forge to be even an advocate, far less the first 
articulate expositor, of the doctrine of Occasional Causes. 



78 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

nothing), as well as to the object of thought (i. e. the representa- 
tion of which we are conscious in the mind itself). In the Leib- 
nitio-Wolfian system, two elements, both also denominated ideas, 
are in like manner accurately to be contra-distinguished in the 
process of perception. The idea in the brain, and the idea in the 
mind, are, to Descartes, precisely what the " material idea," and 
the " sensual idea," are to the Wolfians. In both philosophies, the 
two ideas are harmonic modifications, correlative and co-existent; 
but in neither, is the organic affection or material idea an object of 
consciousness. It is merely the unknown and arbitrary condition 
of the mental representation ; and in the hypotheses both of Assist- 
ance and of Pre-established Harmony, the presence of the one idea 
implies the concomitance of the other, only by virtue of the hyper- 
physical determination. Had Reid, in fact, not limited his study 
of the Cartesian system to the writings of its founder, the twofold 
application of the term idea, by Descartes, could never have seduced 
him into the belief, that so monstrous a solecism had been commit- 
ted by that illustrious thinker. By De la Forge, the personal friend 
of Descartes, the verbal ambiguity is, indeed, not only noticed, 
but removed; and that admirable expositor. applies the term "cor- 
poreal species" to the affection in the brain, and the terms " idea" 
" intellectual notion," to the spiritual representation in the con- 
scious mind. — [De VEsprit, c. 10.) 

But if Reid be wrong in his supposition, that Descartes admit- 
ted a consciousness of ideas in the brain; 1 is he on the other al- 
ternative wrong, and inexcusably wrong, in holding that Descar- 
tes supposed ideas in the mind, not identical with their percep- 
tions? Mallebranche, the most illustrious name in the school 
after its founder, (and who, not certainly with less ability, may 
be supposed to have studied the writings of his master, with fai 
greater attention than either Reid or Brown,) ridicules, as "con- 
trary to common sense and justice," the supposition that Descartes 
had rejected ideas in "the ordinary acceptation," and adopted the 
hypothesis of their being representations, not really distinct from 
their perception. And while " he is as certain as he possibly can 
be in such matters," that Descartes had not dissented from the 
general opinion, he taunts Arnauld with resting his paradoxical 
interpretation of that philosopher's doctrine "not on any passages 

1 Reid's error on this point is however surpassed by that of M. Royer-Collard, who 
represents the idea in the Cartesian doctrine of perception as exclusively situate in the 
brain. — {(Euvres dc Reid, HI. p. 334). 



HISTORICALLY, REID EIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 79 

of his Metaphysic contrary to the common opinion" but on his 
own arbitrary limitation of "the ambiguous term perception? 
[Rep. au Livre des Idees, passim; Arnauld, CEuv. xxxviii. pp. 
388, 389.) That ideas are "found in the mind, not formed by it" 
and consequently, that in the act of knowledge the representation 
is really distinct from the cognition proper, is strenuously asserted 
as the doctrine of his master by the Cartesian Roell, in the con- 
troversy he maintained with the Anti-Cartesian De Yries. (Ro- 
elli Dispp.; De Vries De Ideis imiatis.) But it is idle to mul- 
tiply proofs. Brown's charge of ignorance falls back upon himself; 
and Reid may lightly bear the reproach of "exactly reversing" 
the notorious doctrine of Descartes, when thus borne, along with 
him, by the profoundest of that philosopher's disciples. 

Had Brown been aware, that the point at issue between him 
and Reid, was one agitated among the followers of Descartes 
themselves, he could hardly have dreamt of summarily determin- 
ing the question by the production of one vulgar passage from the 
writings of that philosopher. But we are sorely puzzled to ac- 
count for his hallucination, in considering this passage pertinent. 
Its substance is fully given by Reid in his exposition of the Car- 
tesian doctrine. Every iota it contains, of any relevancy, is 
adopted by Mallebranche ; — constitutes, less precisely indeed, his 
famous distinction of perception (idee) from sensation (sentiment) : 
and Mallebranche is one of the two modern philosophers admitted 
by Brown to have held the hypothesis of representation in its first, 
and, as he says, its most " erroneous" form. But principles that 
coalesce, even with the hypothesis of ideas distinct from mind, 
are not, a fortiori, incompatible with the hypothesis, of ideas dis- 
tinct only from the perceptive act. We can not, however, enter 
on an articulate exposition of its irrelevancy. 

To adduce Hobbes, as an instance of Reid's misrepresentation 
of the " common doctrine of ideas," betrays, on the part of Brown, 
a total misapprehension of the conditions of the question ; or he 
forgets that Hobbes was a materialist. The doctrine of repre- 
sentation, under all its modifications, is properly subordinate to 
the doctrine of a spiritual principle of thought ; and on the sup- 
position, all but universally admitted among philosophers, that 
the relation of knowledge implied the analogy of existence, it was 
mainly devised to explain the possibility of a knowledge by an 
immaterial subject, of an existence so disproportioned to its na- 
ture, as the qualities of a material object. Contending, that an 



80 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

immediate cognition of the accidents of matter, infers an essential 
identity of matter and mind, Brown himself admits, that the hy- 
pothesis of representation belongs exclusively to the doctrine of 
dualism (Lect. xxv. pp. 159, 160) ; while Reid, assailing the 
hypothesis of ideas, only as subverting the reality of matter, could 
hardly regard it as parcel of that scheme, which acknowledges the 
reality of nothing else. But though Hobbes can not be adduced 
as a competent witness against Reid, he is however valid evi- 
dence against Brown. Hobbes, though a materialist, admitted 
no knowledge of an external world. Like his friend Sorbiere, he 
was a kind of material idealist. According to him, we know 
nothing of the qualities or existence of any outward reality. All 
that we know is the " seeming," the " apparition," the " aspect," 
the u phenomenon " the "phantasm," within ourselves ; and this 
subjective object, of which we are conscious, and which is con- 
sciousness itself, is nothing more than the "agitation" of our 
internal organism, determined by the unknown " motions," which 
are supposed, in like manner, to constitute the world without. 
Perception he reduces to sensation. Memory and imagination 
are faculties specijically identical with sense, differing from it 
simply in the degree of their vivacity ; and this difference of in- 
tensity, with Hobbes, as with Hume, is the only discrimination 
between our dreaming and our waking thoughts. — A doctrine of 
perception identical with Reid's ! 

In regard to Arnauld, the question is not, as in relation to the 
others, whether Reid conceives him to maintain a form of the 
ideal theory which he rejects, but whether Reid admits AmaukVs 
opinion on perception and his oivn to be identical. " To these 
authors," says Dr. Brown, "whose opinions, on the subject of 
perception, Dr. Reid has misconceived, I may add one, whom even 
he himself allows to have shaken off the ideal system, and to have 
considered the idea and the perception, as not distinct, but the 
same, a modification of the mind and nothing more. I allude to 
the celebrated Jansenist writer, Arnauld, who maintains this doc- 
trine as expressly as Dr. Reid himself, and makes it the founda- 
tion of his argument in his controversy with Mallebranche." 
(Lecture xxvii. p. 173.) If this statement be not untrue, then is 
Dr. Brown's interpretation of Reid himself correct. A represent- 
ative perception, under its third and simplest modification, is held 
by Arnauld as by Brown; and his exposition is so clear and artic- 
ulate, that all essential misconception of his doctrine is precluded. 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 81 

In these circumstances, if Reid avow the identity of Arnauld's 
opinion and his own, this avowal is tantamount to a declaration 
that his peculiar doctrine of perception is a scheme of representa- 
tion; whereas, on the contrary, if he signalize the contrast of 
their two opinions, he clearly evinces the radical antithesis — and 
his sense of the radical antithesis— of the doctrine of intuition, 
to every, even the simplest form of the hypothesis of representa- 
tion. And this last he does. 

It can not he maintained, that Reid admits a philosopher to 
hold an opinion convertible with his, whom he states : — " to profess 
the doctrine, universally received, that ive perceive not material 
things immediately — that it is their ideas, which are the immediate 
objects of our thoughts — and that it is in the idea of every thing, 
that we perceive its properties." This fundamental contrast being 
established, we may safely allow, that the radical misconception, 
which caused Reid to overlook the difference of our presentative 
and representative faculties, caused him likewise to believe, that 
Arnauld had attempted to unite two contradictory theories of 
perception. Not aware, that it was possible to maintain a doc- 
trine of perception, in which the idea was not really distinguished 
from its cognition, and yet to hold that the mind had no imme- 
diate knowledge of external things : Reid supposes, in the first 
place, that Arnauld, in rejecting the hypothesis of ideas, as repre- 
sentative entities, really distinct from the contemplative act of 
perception, coincided with himself in viewing the material reality, 
as the immediate object of that act ; and, in the second, that 
Arnauld again deserted this opinion, when, with the philosophers, 
he maintained, that the idea, or act of the mind representing the 
external reality, and not the external reality itself, was the im- 
mediate object of perception. But Arnauld's theory is one and 
indivisible ; and, as such, no part of it is identical with Reid's. 
Reid's confusion, here as elsewhere, is explained by the circum- 
stance, that he had never speculatively conceived the possibility 
of the simplest modification of the representative hypothesis. He 
saw no medium between rejecting ideas as something different 
from thought, and the doctrine of an immediate knowledge of the 
material object. Neither does Arnauld, as Reid supposes, ever 
assert against Mallebranche, " that we perceive external things 
immediately," that is, in themselves. l Maintaining t*hat all our 

1 This is perfectly clear from Arnauld's own uniform statements ; and it is justly 
observed by Mallebranche, in his Reply to the Treatise On True and False Ideas, (p. 

F 



82 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

perceptions are modifications essentially representative, Arnauld 
everywhere avows, that he denies ideas, only as existences distinct 
from the act itself of perception. 1 

Reid was therefore wrong, and did Arnauld less than justice, 
in viewing his theory "as a weak attempt to reconcile two incon- 
sistent doctrines :" he was wrong, and did Arnauld more than 
justice, in supposing, that one of these doctrines is not incom- 
patible with his own. The detection, however, of this error only 
tends to manifest more clearly, how just, even when under its 
influence, was Reid's appreciation of the contrast, subsisting be- 
tween his own and Arnauld's opinion, considered as a whole; and 
exposes more glaringly Brown's general misconception of Reid's 
philosophy, and his present gross misrepresentation, in affirming 
that the doctrines of the two philosophers were identical, and by 
Reid admitted to be the same. 

Nor is Dr. Brown more successful in his defense of Locke. 

Supposing always, that ideas were held to be something dis- 
tinct from their cognition, Reid states it, as that philosopher's 
opinion, "that images of external objects were conveyed to the 
brain ; but whether he thought with Descartes {erratum for Dr. 
Clarke ?] and Newton, that the images in the brain are perceived 
by the mind, there present, or that they are imprinted on the 
mind itself, is not so evident." This, Dr. Brown, nor is he orig- 
inal in the assertion, pronounces a flagrant misrepresentation. 
Not only does he maintain, that Locke never conceived the idea 
to be substantially different from the mind, as a material image 
in the brain; but, that he never supposed it to have an existence 
apart from the mental energy of which it is the object. Locke, 
he asserts, like Arnauld, considered the idea perceived and the 
percipient act, to constitute, the same indivisible modification of 
the conscious mind. We shall see. 

In his language, Locke is, of all philosophers, the most figura- 
tive, ambiguous, vacillating, various, and even contradictory; — 
as has been noticed by Reid, and Stewart, and Brown himself — 

123, orig. edit.) — that, "in reality, according to M. Arnauld, we do not perceive bodies, 
we perceive only ourselves." 

1 QEuvres t. xxxviii. pp. 187, 198, 199, 389, et passim. It is to be recollected that 
Descartes, Mallebranchc, Arnauld, Locke, and philosophers in general before Reid, 
employed the term Perception as co-extensive with Consciousness. — By Leibnitz, 
Wolf, and their followers, it was used in a peculiar sense — as equivalent to Repre- 
sentation or Idea proper, and as contradistinguished from Apperception, or conscious- 
ness. Reid's limitation of the term, though the grounds on which it is defended are 
not of the strongest, is convenient, and has been very generally admitted. 



HISTORICALLY, HMD RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 83 

indeed, we believe, by every author who has had occasion to 
comment on this philosopher. The opinions of such a writer are 
not, therefore, to be assumed from isolated and casual express- 
ions, which themselves require to be interpreted on the general 
analogy of his system ; and yet this is the only ground on which 
Dr. Brown attempts to establish his conclusions. Thus, on the 
matter under discussion, though really distinguishing, Locke 
verbally confounds, the objects of sense and of intellect — the 
operation and its object — the objects immediate and mediate — 
the object and its relations — the images of fancy and the notions 
of the understanding. Consciousness is converted with Percep- 
tion — Perception with Idea — Idea with Ideatum, and with No- 
tion, Conception, Phantasm, Representation, Sense, Meaning, &c. 
Now, his language identifying ideas and perceptions, appears 
conformable to a disciple of Arnauld ; and now it proclaims him 
a follower of Digby — explaining ideas by mechanical impulse, 
and the propagation of material particles' from the external real- 
ity to the brain. The idea would seem, in one passage, an or- 
ganic affection — the mere occasion of a spiritual representation ; 
in another, a representative image, in the brain itself. In em- 
ploying thus indifferently the language of every hypothesis, may 
we not suspect, that he was anxious to be made responsible for 
none ? One, however, he has formally rejected : and that is the 
very opinion attributed to him by Dr. Brown — that the idea, or 
object of consciousness in perception, is only a modification of 
the mind itself. 

We do not deny, that Locke occasionally employs expressions, 
which, in a writer of more considerate language, would imply 
the identity of ideas with the act of knowledge ; and, under the 
circumstances, we should have considered suspense more rational 
than a dogmatic confidence in any conclusion, did not the follow- 
ing passage, which has never, we believe, been noticed, appear a 
positive and explicit contradiction of Dr. Brown's interpretation. 
It is from Locke's Examination of Mallebranche's Opinion, 
which, as subsequent to the publication of the Essay, must be 
held authentic, in relation to the doctrines of that work. At the 
same time, the statement is articulate and precise, and possesses 
all the authority of one cautiously made in the course of a pole- 
mical discussion. Mallebranche coincided with Arnauld, and 
consequently with Locke, as interpreted by Brown, to the extent 
of supposing, that sensation proper is nothing but a state or 



84 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

modification of the mind itself ; and Locke had thus the oppor- 
tunity of expressing, in regard to this opinion, his agreement or 
dissent. An acquiescence in the doctrine, that the secondary 
qualities, of which we are conscious in sensation, are merely 
mental states, by no means involves an admission that the pri- 
mary qualities of which we are conscious in perception, are 
nothing more. Mallebranche, for example, affirms the one and 
denies the other. But if Locke be found to ridicule, as he does, 
even the opinion which merely reduces the secondary qualities 
to mental states, a fortiori, and this on the principle of his own 
philosophy, he must be held to reject the doctrine, which would 
reduce not only the non-resembling sensations of the secondary, 
but even the resembling, and consequently extended, ideas of the 
primary qualities of matter, to modifications of the immaterial 
unextended mind. In these circumstances, the following passage 
is superfluously conclusive against Brown, and equally so, whe- 
ther we coincide or not in all the principles it involves. " But 
to examine their doctrine of modification a little farther. Differ- 
ent sentiments (sensations) are different modifications of the 
mind. The mind, or soul, that perceives, is one immaterial in- 
divisible substance. Now I see the white and black on this paper, 
I hear one singing in the next room, I feel the warmth of the fire 
I sit by, and I taste an apple I am eating, and all this at the 
same time. Now, I ask, take modification for what you please, 
can the same unextended, indivisible substance have different, 
nay, inconsistent and opposite (as these of white and black must 
be) modifications at the same time ? Or must we suppose dis- 
tinct parts in an indivisible substance, one for black, another for 
white, and another for red ideas, and so of the rest of those in- 
finite sensations, which we have in sorts and degrees; all which 
we can distinctly perceive, and so are distinct ideas, some where- 
of are opposite, as heat and cold, which yet a man may feel at 
the same time ? I was ignorant before, how sensation was per- 
formed in us : this they call an explanation of it ! Must I say 
now I understand it better ? If this be to cure one's ignorance, 
it is a very slight disease, and the charm of two or three insig- 
nificant words will at any time remove it; prabatum est.'''' (Sec. 
39.) This passage, as we shall see, is correspondent to the doc- 
trine held on this point by Locke's personal friend and philosoph- 
ical follower, Le Clerc. (But, what is curious, the suppositions 
which Locke here rejects, as incompatible with the spirituality 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 85 

of mind, are the very facts, on which Ammonius Hermiae, Phi- 
loponus, and Condillac, among many others, found their proof of 
the immateriality of the thinking subject.) 

But if it he thus evident, that Locke held neither the third 
form of representation, that lent to him by Brown, nor even the 
second ; it follows, that Reid did him any thing but injustice, in 
supposing him to maintain, that ideas are objects, either in the 
brain, or in the mind itself. Even the more material of these 
alternatives has been the one generally attributed to him by his 
critics, 1 and the one adopted from him by his disciples. 2 Nor is 
this to be deemed an opinion too monstrous to be entertained by 
so enlightened a philosopher. It was, as we shall see, the com- 
mon opinion of the age ; the opinion, in particular, held by the 
most illustrious of his countrymen and contemporaries — by New- 
ton, Clarke, Willis, Hook, &c. 3 The English psychologists have 
indeed been generally very mechanical. 

Dr. Brown at length proceeds to consummate his imagined vic- 
tory, by "that most decisive evidence, found not in treatises read 
only by a few, but in the popular elementary works of science of 
the time, the general text books of schools and colleges." He 
quotes, however, only two : — the Pneumatology of Le Clerc, and 
the Logic of Crousaz. 

" Le Clerc," says Dr. Brown, " in his chapter on the nature 
of ideas, gives the history of the opinions of philosophers on this 
subject, and states among them the very doctrine which is most 

1 To refer only to the first and last of his regular critics : see Solid Philosophy 
asserted against the Fancies of the Ideists, by J. S. [John Sergeant.] Lond. 1697, 
p. 161 — a very curious book, absolutely, we may say, unknown ; and Cousin, Cows de 
Philosophic, t. ii. 1829 ; pp. 330, 357, 325, 365 — the most important work on Locke 
since the Nouveaux Essais of Leibnitz. 

2 Tucker's Light of Nature, i. pp. 15, 18, ed. 2. 

3 On the opinion of Newton and Clarke, see Des Maizeaux's Recueil, i. pp. 7, 8, 
9, 15, 22, 75, 127, 169, &c. Genovesi notices the crudity of Newton's doctrine, 
"Mentem in cerebro praesidere atque in eo, suo scilicet sensorio, rerum imagines cernere." 
On Willis, see his work, De Anima Brutorum, p. 64, alibi, ed. 1672. On Hook, see his 
Lect. on Light, § 7. We know not whether it has been remarked that Locke's doctrine of 
particles and impulse, is precisely that of Sir Kenelm Digby ; and if Locke adopts one 
part of so gross an hypothesis, what is there improbable in his adoption of the other? 
— that the object of perception is, "a material participation of the bodies that work 
on the outward organs of the senses." (Digby, Treatise of Bodies, c. 32.) As a spe- 
cimen of the mechanical explanations of mental phenomena then considered satisfac- 
tory, we quote Sir Kenelm's theory of memory : " Out of which it followeth, that the 
little similitudes which are in the caves of the brain, wheeling and swimming about, 
almost in such sort as you see in the washing of currants or rice by the winding about 
and circular turning of the cook's hand, divers sorts of bodies do go their course for 
a pretty while ; so that the most ordinary objects can not but present themselves 
quickly," &c, &c. (ibidem.) 



86 PHILOSOPHY" OF PERCEPTION. 

forcibly and accurately opposed to the ideal system of perception. 
'•Alii putant ideas et perceptions idearum easdem esse, licet rela- 
tionibus differant. Idea, uti censent, proprie ad objectum refer- 
tur, quod mens considerat ; — perceptio, vere ad mentem ipsam 
qua3 percipit : sed duplex ilia relatio ad unam modificationem 
mentis pertinet. Itaque, secundum hosce philosophos, nulke 
sunt, proprie, loquendo, idese a mente nostra distinctse.' What is 
it, I may ask, which Dr. Reid considers himself as having added 
to this very philosophical view of perception ? and. if he added 
nothing, it is surely too much to ascribe to him the merit of de- 
tecting errors, the counter statement of which had long formed 
a part of the elementary ivorks of the school." 

In the first place, Dr. Reid certainly " added" nothing "to this 
very philosophical view of perception," but he exploded it altogether. 
In the second, it is false, either that this doctrine of perception 
"had long formed part of the elementary ivorks of the schools," 
or that Le Clerc affords any countenance to this assertion. On 
the contrary, it is virtually stated by him to be the novel paradox 
of a single philosopher ; nay to carry the blunder to hyperbole, 
it is already, as such a singular opinion, discussed and referred 
to its author by Reid himself. Had Dr. Brown proceeded from 
the tenth paragraph, which he quotes, to the fourteenth, which 
he could not have read, he would have found, that the passage 
extracted, so far from containing the statement of an old and 
familiar dogma in the schools, was, neither more nor less, than a 
statement of the contemporary hypothesis of — Antony Arnauld ! 
and of Antony Arnauld alone ! ! 

In the third place, from the mode in which he cites Le Clerc, 
his silence to the contrary, and the general tenor of his statement, 
Dr. Brown would lead us to believe, that Le Clerc himself coin- 
cides in "this very philosophical view of perception." So far, 
however, from coinciding with Arnauld, he pronounces his opin- 
ion to be false ; controverts it upon very solid grounds ; and in 
delivering his own doctrine touching ideas, though sufficiently 
cautious in telling us what they are, he has no hesitation in as- 
suring us, among other things which they can not be, that they 
are not modifications or essential states of mind. u Non est (idea 
sc.) modificatio aut essentia mentis : nam prseterquam quod sen- 
timus ingens esse discrimen inter idaea perceptionem et sensatio- 
nem ; quid habet mens nostra simile monti, aut innumeris ejus- 
modi ideis?" — [Pneumat. sect. i. c. 5. $ 10.) 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. . 87 

On all this no observation of ours can be either so apposite or 
authoritative, as the edifying reflections with which Dr. Brown 
himself concludes his vindication of the philosophers against Reid. 
Brown's precept is sound, hut his example is instructive. One 
word we leave blank, which the reader may himself supply. — 

"That a mind so vigorous as that of Dr. should have been 

capable of the series of misconceptions which we have traced, may 
seem wonderful, and truly is so ; and equally, or rather still more 
wonderful, is the general admission of his merit in this respect. 
I trust it will impress you with one important lesson — to consult 
the opinions of authors in their own works, and not in the ivorks 
of those who profess to give a faithful account of them. From 
my own experience I can most truly assure you, that there is 
scarcely an instance in ivhich I have found the view I had re- 
ceived of them to be faithful. There is usually something more, 
or something less, which modifies the general result ; and by the 
various additions and subtractions thus made, so much of the 
spirit of the original doctrine is lost, that it may, in some cases, 
be considered, as having made a fortunate escape, if it be not at 
last represented as directly opposite to what it is." (Lect. xxvii. 
p. 175.) 

The cause must, therefore, be unconditionally decided in favor 
of Reid, even on that testimony, which Brown triumphantly pro- 
duces in court, as u the most decisive evidence" against him: — 
here then we might close our case. To signalize, however, more 
completely the whole character of the accusation, we shall call a 
few witnesses ; to prove, in fact, nothing more than that Brown's 
own "most decisive evidence" is not less favorable to himself, 
than any other that might be cited from the great majority of the 
learned. 

Mallebranche, in his controversy with Arnauld, every where 
assumes the doctrine of ideas, really distinct from their percep- 
tion, to be the one " commonly received ;" nor does his adversary 
venture to dispute the assumption. {Rep. au Livre des Idees. — 
Arnauld, (Euv. t. xxxviii. p. 388.) 

Leibnitz, on the other hand, in answer to Clarke, admits, that 
the crude theory of ideas held by this philosopher, was the com- 
mon. " Je ne demeure point d'accord des notions vulg aires, 
comme si les Images des choses etaient transportees, par les or- 
ganes, jusqu'a fame. Cette notion de la Philosophic Vulgaire 
n'est point intelligible, comme les nouveaux Cartesiens l'ont assez 



88 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

montre. L'on ne saurait expliquer comment la substance imma- 
terielle est affectee par la matiere: et soutenir une chose non 
intelligible la-dessus, c'est recourir a la notion scholastique chi- 
merique de je ne sais quelles especes intentionelles inexpliquable, 
qui passentdes organes dans l'ame." {Opera, II. p. 161.) Nor 
does Clarke, in reply, disown this doctrine for himself and others. 
—(Ibid. p. 182.) 

Brucker, in his Historia Philosophica Doctrinal de Ideis 
(1723), speaks of Arnaulcl's hypothesis as a "peculiar opinion" 
rejected by "philosophers in general (plerisque eruditis)," and 
as not less untenable than the paradox of Mallebranche. — (P. 
248.) 

Dr. Brown is fond of text-books. Did we condescend to those 
of ordinary authors, we could adduce a cloud of witnesses against 
him. As a sample, we shall quote only three., but these of the 
very highest authority. 

Christian Thomasius, though a reformer of the Peripatetic and 
Cartesian systems, adopted a grosser theory of ideas than either. 
In his Introductio ad Philosophiam aulicom (1702), he defines 
thought in general, a mental discourse "about images, by the 
motion of external bodies, and through the organs of sense, 
stamped in the substance of the brainy (c. 3. k 29. See also 
his hist. Jurispr. Div. L. i. c. 1., and Introd. in Phil, ration. 
c. 3.) 

S'Gtravesande, in his Introductio ad Philosophiam (1736), 
though professing to leave undetermined, the positive question 
concerning the origin of ideas, and admitting that sensations are 
"nothing more than modifications of the mind itself;" makes no 
scruple, in determining the negative, to dismiss, as absurd, the 
hypothesis, which would reduce sensible ideas to an equal sub- 
jectivity. " Mentem ipsam has Ideas efficere, et sibi ipsi repre- 
sentee res, quarum his solis Ideis cognitionem acquirit, nullo 
modo concipi potest. Nulla inter causam et effectum relatio 
daretur." (hh 279, 282.) 

Genovesi, in his Elementa Metaphysicce (1748), lays it down 
as a fundamental position of philosophy, that ideas and the act 
cognitive of ideas are distinct (" Prop. xxx. Idece et Percep- 
tions non videntur esse posse una eademque res") ; and he ably 
refutes the hypothesis of Arnauld, which he reprobates as 
a paradox, unworthy of that illustrious reasoner. (Pars. II. p. 
140.) 



HISTORICALLY, REID RIGHT, BROWN WRONG. 89 

Voltaire's Dictionnaire Philosophique may be adduced as re- 
presenting the intelligence of the age of Reid himself. " Q,u'est- 
ce qu'une Idee ? — C'est une Image qui se peint dans mon cer- 
veau. — Toutes vos pensees sont done des images ? — Assurement," 
&c. (voce Idee.) 

What, in fine, is the doctrine of the two most numerous schools 
of modern philosophy — the Leibnitian and Kantian ? ' Both 
maintain that the mind involves representations of which it is 
not, and never may be, conscious ; that is, both maintain the 
second form of the hypothesis, and one of the two that Reid 
understood and professedly assailed. [This statement requires 
qualification.] 

In Crousaz, Dr. Brown has actually succeeded in finding one 
example (he might have found twenty), of a philosopher, before 
Reid, holding the same theory of ideas with Arnauld and himself. 2 

The reader is now in a condition to judge of the correctness of 
Brown's statement, "that with the exception of Mallebranche 
and Berkeley, who had peculiar and very erroneous notions on the 
subject, all the philosophers whom Dr. Reid considered himself 
as opposing," (what ! Newton, Clarke, Hook, Norris ; Porterfield, 

1 Leibnitz ; — Opera, Dutensii, torn. ii. pp. 21, 23, 33, 214, pars ii. pp. 137, 145, 
146. (Euvres Philos. par Raspe, pp. 66, 67, 74, 96, ets. Wolf ; — Psychol. Rat. § 
10, ets. Psychol. Emp. § 48. Kant — Critik d. r. V. p. 376. ed. 2. Anthropologic, 
<J 5. With one restriction, Leibnitz's doctrine is that of the lower Platonists, who 
maintained that the soul actually contains representations of every possible substance 
and event in the world during the revolution of the great year ; although these cogni- 
tive reasons are not elicited in consciousness, unless the reality, thus represented, be 
itself brought within the sphere of the sensual organs. (Plotinus, Enn. V. lib. vii. cc. 
1, 2, 3.) 

" In speaking of this author, Dr. Brown, who never loses an opportunity to depre- 
ciate Reid, goes out of his way to remark, " that precisely the same distinction of 
sensations and perceptions, on which Dr. Reid founds so much, is stated and enforced 
in the different works of this ingenious writer," and expatiates on this conformity of 
the two philosophers, as if he deemed its detection to be something new and curious. 
Mr. Stewart had already noticed it in his Essays. But neither he nor Brown seem 
to recollect, that Crousaz only copies Mallebranche, re et verbis, and that Reid had 
himself expressly assigned to that philosopher the merit of first recognizing the dis- 
tinction. This is incorrect. But M. Royer Collard (Reid, (Euvres, t. hi. p. 329) is 
still more inaccurate in thinking that Mallebranche and Leibnitz (Leibnitz !) were per- 
haps the only philosophers before Reid, who had discriminated perception from sensa- 
tion. The distinction was established by Des Cartes ; and after Mallebranche, but 
long before Reid, it had become even common ; and so far is Leibnitz from having 
any merit in the matter, his criticism of Mallebranche shows, that with all his learn- 
ing he was strangely ignorant of a discrimination then familiar to philosophers in 
general, which may indeed be traced under various appellations to the most ancient 
times. [A contribution toward this history, and a reduction of the qualities of matter 
to three classes, under the names of Primary, Secundo-primary, and Secondary, is 
given in the Supplementary Dissertations appended to Reid's Works (p. 825-875.)] 



90 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

&c. ? — these, be it remembered, all severally attacked by Reid, 
Brown has neither ventured to defend, nor to acknowledge that 
he could not), "would, if they had been questioned by him, have 
admitted, before they heard a single argument on his part, that 
their opinions with respect to ideas ivere precisely the same as his 
own." (Lect. xxvii. p. 174.) 

We have thus vindicated our original assertion : — Brown has 

NOT SUCCEEDED IN CONVICTING ReID, EVEN OF A SINGLE ERROR. 

Brown's mistakes regarding the opinions on perception, enter- 
tained by Reid and the philosophers, are perhaps, however, even 
less astonishing, than his total misconception of the purport of 
Hume's reasoning against the existence of matter, and of the 
argument by which Reid invalidates Hume's skeptical conclusion. 
We shall endeavor to reduce the problem to its simplicity. 

Our knowledge rests ultimately on certain facts of conscious- 
ness, which as primitive, and consequently incomprehensible, are 
given less in the form of cognitions than of beliefs. But if con- 
sciousness in its last analysis— in other words, if our primary 
experience, be a faith ; the reality of our knowledge turns on the 
veracity of our constitutive beliefs. As ultimate, the quality of 
these beliefs can not be inferred ; their truth, however, is in the 
first instance to be presumed. As given and possessed, they 
must stand good until refuted; " neganti incumbit probation 
It is not to be presumed, that Intelligence gratuitously annihilates 
itself; — that Nature operates in vain ; — that the Author of nature 
creates only to deceive. 

" §i]\vr\ S'ovTrore TvafiTrai/ aTrdAXurcu, tJvtivcl Trdvres 
Aaol cf>r)iii£ov(n- Oeov vv ri earl <a\ avrrj.' 

But though the truth of our instinctive faiths must in the first 
instance be admitted, their falsehood may subsequently be estab- 
lished : this however only through themselves — only on the 
ground of their reciprocal contradiction. Is this contradiction 
proved, the edifice of our knowledge is undermined ; for " no lie 
is of the truth." Consciousness is to the philosopher, what the 
Bible is to the theologian. Both are professedly revelations of 
divine truth ; both exclusively supply the constitutive principles 
of knowledge, and the regulative principles of its construction. 
To both we must resort for elements and for laivs. Each may be 
disproved, but disproved only by itself. If one or other reveal 
facts, which, as mutually repugnant, can not but be false, the 
authenticity of that revelation is invalidated ; and the criticism 



BROWN'S MISCONCEPTION OF SKEPTICISM. 91 

which signalizes this self-refutation, has, in either case, been able 
to convert assurance into skepticism — "to turn the truth of G-od 
into a lie," 

" Et violare fidem primam, et convellere tota 
Fundamenta quibus nixatur vita, sotiusque." — Lucr. 

As psychology is only a developed consciousness, that is, a 
scientific evolution of the facts of which consciousness is the 
guarantee and revelation : the positive philosopher has thus a 
primary presumption in favor of the elements out of which his 
system is constructed; while the skeptic, or negative philoso- 
pher, must be content to argue back to the falsehood of these 
elements, from the impossibility which the dogmatist may expe- 
rience, in combining them into the harmony of truth. For truth 
is one ; and the end of philosophy is the intuition of unity. Skep- 
ticism is not an original or independent method ; it is the correl- 
ative and consequent of dogmatism ; and so far from being an 
enemy to truth, it arises only from a false philosophy, as its indi- 
cation and its cure. " Alte dubitat, qui altius credit." The 
skeptic must not himself establish, but from the dogmatist accept, 
his principles ; and his conclusion is only a reduction of philoso- 
phy to zero, on the hypothesis of the doctrine from which his 
premises are borrowed. — Are the principles which a particular 
system involves, convicted of contradiction ; or, are these princi- 
ples proved repugnant to others, which, as facts of consciousness, 
every positive philosophy must admit ; there is established a rel- 
ative skepticism, or the conclusion, that philosophy in so far as 
realized in this system, is groundless. — Again, are the principles, 
which, as facts of consciousness, philosophy in general must com- 
prehend, found exclusive of each other ; there is established an 
absolute skepticism; — the impossibility of all philosophy is in- 
volved in the negation of the one criterion of truth. Our state- 
ment may be reduced to a dilemma. Either the facts of con- 
sciousness can be reconciled, or they can not. If they can not, 
knowledge absolutely is impossible, and every system of philo- 
sophy therefore false. If they can, no system which supposes 
their inconsistency can pretend to truth. 

As a legitimate skeptic, Hume could not assail the foundations 
of knowledge in themselves. His reasoning is from their subse- 
quent contradiction to their original falsehood ; and his premises, 
not established by himself, are accepted only as principles uni- 
versally conceded in the previous schools of philosophy. On the 



92 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

assumption, that what was thus unanimously admitted by philo- 
sophers, must be admitted of philosophy itself, his argument 
against the certainty of knowledge was triumphant. — Philoso- 
phers agreed in rejeoting certain primitive beliefs of conscious- 
ness as false, and in usurping others as true. If consciousness, 
however, were confessed to yield a lying evidence in one particu- 
lar, it could not be adduced as a credible witness at all : — " Fal- 
sus in uno, falsus in omnibus." But as the reality of our knowl- 
edge necessarily rests on the assumed veracity of consciousness, 
it thus rests on an assumption implicitly admitted by all sys- 
tems of philosophy to be illegitimate. 

" Faciunt, nee, intelligendo, ut nihil intclligant .'" 

Reid (like Kant) did not dispute Hume's inference, as deduced 
from its antecedents. He allowed his skepticism, as relative, to 
be irrefragable ; and that philosophy could not be saved from ab- 
solute skepticism, unless his conceded premises could be disal- 
lowed, by refuting the principles universally acknowledged by 
modern philosophers. This he applied himself to do. He sub- 
jected, these principles to a new and rigorous criticism. If his 
analysis be correct (and it was so, at least, in spirit and inten- 
tion), it proved them to be hypotheses, on which the credulous 
sequacity of philosophers — " philosophorum credula natio" — had 
bestowed the prescriptive authority of self-evident truths ; and 
showed, that where a genuine fact of consciousness had been 
surrendered, it had been surrendered in deference to some ground- 
less assumption, which, in reason, it ought to have exploded. 
Philosophy was thus again reconciled with Nature ; consciousness 
was not a bundle of antilogies ; certainty and knowledge were 
not evicted from man. 

All this Dr. Brown completely misunderstands. He compre- 
hends neither the reasoning of skepticism, in the hands of Hume, 
nor the argument from common sense, in those of Reid. Retro- 
grading himself to the tenets of that philosophy, whose contra- 
dictions Hume had fairly developed into skepticism, he appeals 
against this conclusion to the argument of common sense ; albeit 
that argument, if true, belies his hypothesis, and if his hypothesis 
be true, is belied by it. Hume and Reid he actually represents 
as maintaining precisely the same doctrine, on precisely the same 
grounds ; and finds both concurring with himself, in advocating 
that very opinion, which the one had resolved into a negation of 
all knowledge, and the other exploded as a baseless hypothesis. 



ARGUMENT FROM COMMON SENSE. 93 

Our discussion, at present, is limited to a single question — to 
the truth or falsehood of consciousness in assaying us of the re- 
ality of a material world. In perception, consciousness gives, as 
an ultimate fact, a belief of the knowledge of the existence of 
something different from self. As ultimate, this belief can not 
be reduced to a higher principle ; neither can it be truly analyzed 
into a double element. We only believe that this something 
exists, because we believe that we know (are conscious of) this 
something as existing ; the belief of the existence is necessarily 
involved in the belief of the knowledge of the existence. Both 
are original, or neither. Does consciousness deceive us in the 
latter, it necessarily deludes us in the former ; and if the former, 
though a fact of consciousness, be false ; the latter, because a 
fact of consciousness, is not true. The beliefs contained in the 
two propositions : 

1°, I believe that a material world exists ; 

2°, I believe that I immediately know a material world exist- 
ing (in other words, I believe that the external reality itself 
is the object of which I am conscious in perception) ; 
though distinguished by philosophers, are thus virtually identical. 

The belief of an external world, was too powerful, not to com- 
pel an acquiescence in its truth. But the philosophers yielded to 
nature, only in so far as to coincide in the dominant result. They 
falsely discriminated the belief in the existence, from the belief in 
the knowledge. With a few exceptions, they held fast by the 
truth of the first ; but, on grounds to which it is not here neces- 
sary to advert, they concurred, with singular unanimity, in abjur- 
ing the second. The object of which we are conscious in per- 
ception, could only, they explicitly avowed, be a representative 
image present to the mind ; — an image which, they implicitly 
confessed, we are necessitated to regard as identical with the 
unknown reality itself. Man, in short, upon the common doc- 
trine of philosophy, was doomed by a perfidious nature to realize 
the fable of Narcissus ; he mistakes self for not-self, 

" corpus putat esse quod umbra est." 

To carry these principles to their issue was easy ; and skepti- 
cism in the hands of Hume was the result. The absolute veraci- 
ty of consciousness was invalidated by the falsehood of one of its 
facts ; and the belief of the knovjledge, assumed to be delusive, 
was even supposed in the belief of the existence, admitted to be 
true. The uncertainty of knowledge in general, and in particu- 



94 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

lar, the problematical existence of a material world, were thus 
legitimately established. To confute this reduction on the con- 
ventional ground of the philosophers, Reid saw to be impossi- 
ble ; and the argument which he opposed, was, in fact, imme- 
diately subversive of the dogmatic principle, and only mediately 
of the skeptical conclusion. This reasoning was of very ancient 
application, and had been even long familiarly known by the 
name of the argument from Common Sense. [See Diss., 742- 
803.] 

To argue from common sense is nothing more than to render 
available the presumption in favor of the original facts of con- 
sciousness — that what is by nature necessarily believed to be 
truly is. Aristotle, in whose philosophy this presumption obtained 
the authority of a principle, thus enounces the argument : — 
" What appears to all, that we affirm to be ; and he who rejects 
this belief, will, assuredly, advance nothing better worthy of 
credit." (Eth. Nic. L. x. c. 2.) As this argument rests entire- 
ly on a presumption ; the fundamental condition of its validity 
is, that this presumption be not disproved. The presumption 
in favor of the veracity of consciousness, as we have already 
shown, is redargued by the repugnance of the facts themselves, 
of which consciousness is the complement ; as the truth of all 
can only be vindicated on the truth of each. The argument 
from common sense, therefore postulates, and founds on the as- 
sumption THAT OUR ORIGINAL BELIEFS BE NOT PROVED SELF-CON- 
TRADICTORY. 

The harmony of our primary convictions being supposed, and 
not redargued, the argument from common sense is decisive 
against every deductive inference not in unison with them. For 
as every conclusion is involved in its premises, and as these again 
must ultimately be resolved into some original belief ; the conclu- 
sion, if inconsistent with the primary phenomena of consciousness, 
must, ex hypothesi, be inconsistent with its premises, i. e. be 
logically false. On this ground, our convictions at first hand, 
peremptorily derogate from our convictions at second. " If we 
know and believe," says Aristotle, "through certain original prin- 
ciples, we must know and believe these with, paramount certainty, 
for the very reason that we know and believe all else through 
them ;" and he elsewhere observes, that our approbation is often 
rather to be accorded to what is revealed by nature as actual 
than to what can be demonstrated by philosophy as possible : — 



BROWN IMPOTENT AGAINST THE SKEPTIC. 95 

'* Upocre^etv ov Set nrdvra rots Bia tcov \6ycov, aWa 7ro\A,a«t9 /.taWov 
rot? (fiaLvo/jLevoi?" 1 

" Novimus certissima scientia, et clamante conscientia" (to ap- 
ply the language of Augustine, in our acceptation), is thus a pro- 
position, either absolutely true or absolutely false. The argu- 
ment from common sense, if not omnipotent, is powerless : and 
in the hands of a philosopher by whom its postulate can not be 
allowed, its employment, if not suicidal, is absurd. This condi- 
tion of non-contradiction is unexpressed by ReicL It might seem 
to him too evidently included in the very conception of the argu- 
ment to require enouncement. Dr. Brown has proved that he 
was wrong. Yet Reid could hardly have anticipated, that his 
whole philosophy, in relation to the argument of common sense, 
and that argument itself, were so to be mistaken, as to be ac- 
tually interpreted by contraries. These principles established, 
we proceed to their application. 

Dr. Brown's error, in regard to Reid's doctrine of perception, 
involves the other, touching the relation of that doctrine to Hume's 
skeptical idealism. On the supposition, that Reid views in the 
immediate object of perception a mental modification, and not 
a material quality, Dr. Brown is fully warranted in asserting, 
that he left the foundations of idealism, precisely as he found 
them. Let it once be granted, that the object known in percep- 
tion, is not convertible with the reality existing; idealism re- 
poses in equal security on the hypothesis of a representative per- 
ception — whether the representative image be a modification of 
consciousness itself— or whether it have an existence independ- 
ent either of mind or of the act of thought. The former indeed 
as the simpler basis, would be the more secure; and, in point of 
fact, the egotistical idealism of Fichte, resting on the third form 
of representation, is less exposed to criticism than the theologi- 
cal idealism of Berkeley, which reposes on the first. Did Brown 
not mistake Reid's doctrine, Reid was certainly absurd in think- 
ing, a refutation of idealism to be involved in his refutation of 
the common theory of perception. So far from blaming Brown, 
on this supposition, for denying to Reid the single merit which 
that philosopher thought peculiarly his own ; we only reproach 



1 Jacobi ( Werke, II. Vorr. p. 11, ets.) following Fries, places Aristotle at the head 
of that absurd majority of philosophers, who attempt to demonstrate every thing. This 
would not have been more sublimely false, had it been said of the Germr n Plato him- 
self. 



96 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

him for leaving, to Reid and to himself, any possible mode of 
resisting the idealist at all. It was a monstrous error to reverse 
Reid's doctrine of perception ; but a greater still, not to see that 
this reversal stultifies the argument from common sense ; and 
that so far from "proceeding on safe ground''' in an appeal to 
our original beliefs, Reid would have employed, as Brown has 
actually done, a weapon, harmless to the skeptic, but mortal to 
himself. 

The belief, says Dr. Brown, in the existence of an external 
world is irresistible, therefore it is true. On his doctrine of per- 
ception, which he attributes also to Reid, this inference is, how- 
ever, incompetent, because on that doctrine he can not fulfill the 
condition which the argument implies. / can not but believe 
that material things exist : — I can not but believe that the 
material reality is the object immediately known in perception. 
The former of these beliefs, explicitly argues Dr. Brown, in de- 
fending his system against the skeptic, because irresistible, is 
true. The latter of these beliefs, implicitly argues Dr. Brown, 
in establishing his system itself, though irresistible is false. And 
here not only are two primitive beliefs, supposed to be repugnant, 
and consciousness therefore delusive ; the very belief which is as- 
sumed as true, exists in fact only through the other, which, ex 
hypothesi, is false. Both in reality are one. 1 Kant, in whose 

1 This reasoning can only be invalidated either, 1°, By disproving the belief itself 
of the hioicledge, as a fact ; or — 2°, By disproving its attribute of originality. The 
latter is impossible ; and if possible' would also annihilate the originality of the belief 
of the existence, which is supposed. The former alternative is ridiculous. That we 
are naturally determined to believe the object known in perception, to be the external 
existence itself, and that it is only in consequence of a supposed philosophical necessity, 
we subsequently endeavor by an artificial abstraction to discriminate these, is admitted 
even by those psychologists, whose doctrine is thereby placed in overt contradiction to 
our original beliefs. Though perhaps superfluous to allege authorities in support of 
such a point, we refer, however, to the following, which happen to occur to our recol- 
lection. — Descartes, Dc. Pass. art. 26. — Mallebranche, Rech. I. Hi. c. 1. — Berkeley, 
Works, i. p. 216, and quoted by Reid, Es. I. P. p. 165.— Hume, Treat. H. N. i. pp. 
330. 338. 353. 358 361. 369. orig. cd.— Essays, ii. pp. 154. 157. ed. 1788.— As not 
generally accessible, we translate the following extracts. — Schelling (Ideen zu einer 
Philosophic der Natur. Einl. p. xix. 1st ed.) — " When (in perception) I represent an 
object, object and representation are one and the same. And simply in this our inabil- 
ity to discriminate the object from the representation during the act, lies the conviction 
which the common .sense of mankind (gemeine Verstand) has of the reality of extern- 
al things, although these become known to it, only through representations." (See 
also p. xxvi.) — We can not recover, at the moment, a passage, to the same effect, in 
Kant ; but the ensuing is the testimony of an eminent disciple. — Tennemann, (Gcsch. 
d. Phil. II. p. 294.) speaking of Plato : " The illusion that things in themselves are cog- 
nizable, is so natural, that we need not marvel if even philosophers have not been 
able to emancipate themselves from the prejudice. The common sense of mankind 



BROWN IMPOTENT AGAINST THE SKEPTIC. 97 

doctrine as in Brown's the immediate object of perception consti- 
tutes only a subjective phenomenon, was too acute, not to dis- 
cern that, on this hypothesis, philosophy could not, without con- 
tradiction, appeal to the evidence of our elementary faiths. — "Al- 
lowing idealism," he says, " to be as dangerous as it truly is, it 
would still remain a scandal to philosophy and human reason in 
general, to be compelled to accept the existence of external things 
on the testimony of mere belief?' 1 1 

But Reid is not like Brown, felo de se in his reasoning from our 
natural beliefs ; and on his genuine doctrine of perception, the 
argument has a very different tendency. Reid asserts that his 
doctrine of perception is itself a confutation of the ideal system ; 
and so, when its imperfections are supplied, it truly is. For it 
at once denies to the skeptic and idealist the premises of their con- 
clusion ; and restores to the realist, in its omnipotence, the argu- 
ment of common sense. The skeptic and idealist can only found 
on the admission, that the object known is not convertible with the 
reality existing ; and, at the same time, this admission, by placing 
the facts of consciousness in mutual contradiction, denies its postu- 
late to the argument from our beliefs. Reid's analysis therefore., 
in its result — that we have, as we believe we have, an immw^i, 

ATE KNOWLEDGE OF THE MATERIAL REALITY accomplished eVgry 

thins at once. 2 



(gemeine Menschenverstand) which remains steadfast within the sphere of experience 
recognizes no distinction between things in themselves [unknown reality existing] and 
phenomena [representation, object known] ; and the philosophizing reason, commen- 
ces therewith its attempt to investigate the foundations of this knowledges and to re- 
call itself into system."' — See also Jacobi's David Hume, passim, ( Wjrk'e, it) and his 
Allwills Briefsammlung, (Werke, i. p. 119. ets.) Reid has been already. quoted,.— [Diss, 
p. 747, 748 give other testimonies of a similar purport.] 

1 Cr. d. r. V. — Voir. p. xxxix. Kant's marvelous acuteness did not, however, enable 
him to bestow on his " Only possible demonstration of the reality of an external world " 
{ibid v. 275, ets.) even a logical necessity ; nor prevent his trmiscendental, from being 
apodeictically resolved (by Jacobi and Fichte) into absolute idealism. In this argument, 
indeed, he collects more in the conclusion, than was contained in the antecedent ; and 
reaches it by a double saltus, overleaping the foundations both of the egotistical and mys- 
tical idealists. — Though Kant, in the passage quoted above and in other places, appar- 
ently derides the contaon sense of mankind, and altogether rejects it as a metaphysical 
principle of truth ; he at last, however, found it necessary (in order to save philosophy 
from the annihilating energy of his Speculative Reason) to rest on that very principle 
of an ultimate belief, (which he had originally spurned as a basis even of a material 
reality,) the reality of all the sublimest objects of our interest — God, Free Will Im- 
mortality, &c. His Practical Reason, as far as it extends, is, in truth, only another 
(and not even a better) term for Common Sense. — Fichte, too, escaped the admitted 
nihilism of his speculative philosophy, only by a similar inconsequence in his practical. 
— (See his Bc-stimmung des Menschen.) " Naturam expellas furca," <$-c. 

2 [This is spoken too absolutely. Reid I think was correct in the aim of his phj-, 

a 



98 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION 

Dr. Brown is not, however, more erroneous in thinking that the 
argument from common sense could be employed by him, than in 
supposing that its legitimacy, as so employed, was admitted by 
Hume. So little did he suspect the futility, in his own hands, of 
this proof, he only regards it as superfluous, if opposed to that phi- 
losopher, who, he thinks, in allowing the belief in the existence of 
matter to be irresistible, allows it to be true. (Leot. xxviii. p. 176.) 
Dr. Brown has committed, perhaps, more important mistakes than 
this, in regard to skepticism and to Hume ; — none certainly more 
fundamental. Hume is converted into a dogmatist ; the essence 
of skepticism is misconceived. 

On the hypothesis that our natural beliefs are fallacious, it is 
not for the Pyrrhonist to reject, but to establish their authenti- 
city ; and so far from the admission of their strength being a sur- 
render of his doubt, the very triumph of skepticism consists in 
proving them to be irresistible. By what demonstration is the 
foundation of all certainty and knowledge so effectually subverted, 
as by showing that the principles, which reason constrains us 
speculatively to admit, are contradictory of the facts, which our 
instincts compel us practically to believe ? Our intellectual 
nature is thus seen to be divided against itself; consciousness 
stands self-convicted of delusion. " Surely we have eaten the 
fruit of lies !" 

This is the scope of the " Essay on the Academical or Skeptical 
Philosophy '," from which Dr. Brown quotes. In that essay, pre- 
vious to the quotation, Hume shows, on the admission of philoso- 
phers, that our belief in the knowledge of material things, as im- 
possible is false ; and on this admission, he had irresistibly estab- 
lished the speculative absurdity of our belief in the existence of 
an external world. In the passage, on the contrary, which Dr. 
Brown partially extracts, he is showing that this idealism, which 
in theory must be admitted, is in application impossible. Specu- 
lation and practice, nature and philosophy, sense and reason, be- 
lief and knowledge, thus placed in mutual antithesis, give, as 
their result, the uncertainty of every principle ; and the assertion 
of this uncertainty is — Skepticism. This result is declared even 
in the sentence, with the preliminary clause of which, Dr. Brown 
abruptly terminates his quotation. 

losophy ; but in the execution of his purpose he is often at fault, often confused, and 
sometimes even contradictory. I have endeavored to point out and to correct thesfl 
imperfections in the edition which I have not yet finished of his works.] 



BROWN IMPOTENT AGAINST THE SKEPTIC. 99 

But allowing Dr. Brown to be correct in transmuting the skep- 
tical nihilist into a dogmatic realist ; he would still be wrong (on 
the supposition that Hume admitted the truth of a belief to be 
convertible with its invincibility) in conceiving, on the one hand, 
that Hume could ever acquiesce in the same inconsequent con- 
clusion with himself; or, on the other, that he himself could, 
without an abandonment of his system, acquiesce in the legitimate 
conclusion. On this supposition, Hume could only have arrived 
at a similar result with Reid : there is no tenable medium be- 
tween the natural realism of the one and the skeptical nihilism of 
the other. — "Do you follow," says Hume in the same essay, "the 
instinct and propensities of nature in assenting to the veracity of 
sense?" — I do, says Dr. Brown. (Lect. xxviii. p. 176. alibi.) — 
" But these," continues Hume, "lead you to believe that the very 
perception or sensible image is the external object. Do you dis- 
claim this principle in order to embrace a more rational opinion, 
that the perceptions are only representations of something exter- 
nal ?"— -It is the vital principle of my system, says Brown, that 
the mind knows nothing beyond its own states (Lectt. passim ;) 
philosophical suicide is not my choice ; I must recall my admis- 
sion, and give the lie to this natural belief. — " You here," pro- 
ceeds Hume, "depart from your natural propensities and more 
obvious sentiments ; and yet are not able to satisfy your reason, 
which can never find any convincing argument from experience 
to prove, that the perceptions are connected with any external 
objects." — I allow, says Brown, that the existence of an external 
world can not be proved by reasoning; and that the skeptical ar- 
gument admits of no logical reply. (Lect. xxviii. p. 175.) — " But" 
(we may suppose Hume to conclude) "as you truly maintain that 
the confutation of skepticism can be attempted only in two ways 
(ibid.) — either by showing that its arguments are inconclusive, or 
by opposing to them, as paramount, the evidence of our natural 
beliefs — and as you now, voluntarily or by compulsion, abandon 
both : you are confessedly reduced to the dilemma, either of ac- 
quiescing in the conclusion of the skeptic, or of refusing your 
assent upon no ground whatever. Pyrrhonism or absurdity? — 
choose your horn." 

Were the skepticism into which Dr. Brown's philosophy is thus 
analyzed, confined to the negation of matter, the result would 
be comparatively unimportant. The transcendent reality of an 
outer world, considered absolutely, is to us a matter of supreme 



100 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

indifference. It is not the idealism itself that we must deplore ; 
but the mendacity of consciousness which it involves. Conscious- 
ness, once convicted of falsehood, an unconditional skepticism, in 
regard to the character of our intellectual being, is the melan- 
choly, but only rational result. Any conclusion may now with 
impunity be drawn against the hopes and dignity of human na- 
ture. Our Personality, our Immateriality, our Moral Liberty, 
have no longer an argument for their defense. " Man is the dream 
of a shadow ;" G-od is the dream of that dream. 

Dr. Brown, after the best philosophers, rests the proof of our 
personal identity, and of our mental individuality, on the ground 
of beliefs, which, as " intuitive, universal, immediate, and irre- 
sistible," he not unjustly regards as " the internal and never-ceas- 
ing voice of our Creator — revelations from on high, omnipotent 
[and veracious] as their author." To him this argument is how- 
ever incompetent, as contradictory. 

What we know of self or person, we know, only as given in 
consciousness. In our perceptive consciousness there is revealed 
as an ultimate fact a self and a not-self ; each given as independ- 
ent — each known only in antithesis to the other. No belief is 
more " intuitive, universal, immediate, or irresistible," than that 
this antithesis is real and known to be real ; no belief therefore is 
more true. If the antithesis be illusive, self and not-self, subject 
and object, I and Thou are distinctions without a difference ; and 
consciousness, so far from being " the internal voice of our Crea- 
tor," is shown to be, like Satan, " a liar from the beginning." 
The reality of this antithesis in different parts of his philosophy 
Dr. Brown affirms and denies. — In establishing his theory of per- 
ception, he articulately denies, that mind is conscious of aught 
beyond itself ; virtually asserts, that what is there given in con- 
sciousness as not-self is only a phenomenal illusion — a modifica- 
tion of self, which our consciousness determines us to believe the 
quality of something numerically and substantially different. 
Like Narcissus again, he must lament — 

" Illc ego sum sensi, sed me mea fallit imago." 
After this implication in one part of his system that our belief 
in the distinction of self and not-self is nothing more than the 
deception of a lying consciousness ; it is startling to find him, in 
others, appealing to the beliefs of this same consciousness as to 
"revelations from on high;" — nay, in an especial manner alleg- 
ing " as the voice of our Creator," this very faith in the distinc- 



BROWN IMPOTENT AGAINST THE SKEPTIC. 101 

tion of self and not-self, through the fallacy of which, and of 
which alone, he had elsewhere argued consciousness of falsehood. 

On the veracity of this mendacious, belief, Dr. Brown establishes 
his proof of our personal identity. (Lect. xii. — xv.) Touching 
the object of perception, when its evidence is inconvenient, this 
belief is quietly passed over as incompetent to distinguish not- 
self from self; in the question regarding our personal identity, 
where its testimony is convenient, it is clamorously cited as an 
inspired witness, exclusively competent to distinguish self from 
not-self Yet, why, if, in the one case, it mistook self for not-self 
it may not, in the other, mistake not-self for self would appear a 
problem not of the easiest solution. 

The same belief, with the same inconsistency, is again called 
in to prove the individuality of mind. (Lect. xciv.) But if we 
are fallaciously determined, in perception, to believe what is sup- 
posed idivisible, identical, and one, to be plural and different 
and incompatible (self = self + not-self) ; how, on the authority 
of the same treacherous conviction, dare we maintain, that the 
phenomenal unity of consciousness affords a guarantee of the real 
simplicity of the thinking 1 principle ? The materialist may now 
contend, without fear of contradiction, that self is only an illusive 
phenomenon ; that our consecutive identity is that of the Delphic 
ship, and our present unity merely that of a system of co-ordinate 
activities. To explain the phenomenon, he has only to suppose, 
as certain theorists have lately done, an organ to tell the lie of 
our personality ; and to quote as authority for the lie itself, the 
perfidy of consciousness, on which the theory of a representative 
perfection is founded. 

On the hypothesis of a representative perception, there is, in 
fact, no salvation from materialism, on the one side, short of 
idealism — skepticism — nihilism, on the other. Our knowledge 
of mind and matter, as substances, is merely relative ; they are 
known to us only in their qualities ; and we can justify the postu- 
lation of two different substances, exclusively on the supposition of 
the incompatibility of the double series of phenomena to coinhere 
in one. Is this supposition disproved ? — the presumption against 
dualism is again decisive. " Entities are not to be multiplied with- 
out necessity ;" — " A plurality of principles is not to be assumed 
where the phenomena can be explained by oneP In Brown's 
theory of perception, he abolishes the incompatibility of the two 
series ; and yet his argument, as a dualist, for an immaterial prin- 



102 PHILOSOPHY OF PERCEPTION. 

ciple'of thought, proceeds on the ground, that this incompatibility 
subsists. (Lect. xcvi. pp. 646, 647.) This philosopher denies us 
an immediate knowledge of aught beyond the accidents of mind. 
The accidents which we refer to body, as known to us, are only 
states or modifications of the percipient subject itself; in other 
words, the qualities we call material, are known by us to exist, 
only as they are known by us to inhere in the same substance as 
the qualities tve denominate mental. There is an apparent anti- 
thesis, but a real identity. On this doctrine, the hypothesis of a 
double principle losing its necessity, becomes philosophically ab- 
surd ; and on the law of parsimony, a psychological unitarianism, 
at best, is established. To the argument, that the qualities of the 
object are so repugnant to the qualities of the subject of percep- 
tion, that they can not be supposed the accidents of the same sub- 
stance; the unitarian — whether materialist, idealist, or absolutist 
— has only to reply : that so far from the attributes of the object, 
being exclusive of the attributes of the subject, in this act ; the 
hypothetical dualist himself establishes, as the fundamental axiom 
of his philosophy of mind, that the object knoivn is universal/// 
identical with the subject knowing. The materialist may now 
derive the subject from the object, the idealist derive the object 
from the subject, the absolutist sublimate both into indifference, 
nay, the nihilist subvert the substantial reality of either ; — the 
hypothetical realist so far from being able to resist the conclusion 
of any, in fact accords their assumptive premises to all. 

The same contradiction would, in like manner, invalidate every 
presumption in favor of our Liberty of Will. But as Dr. Brown 
throughout his scheme of Ethics advances no argument in sup- 
port of this condition of our moral being, which his philosophy 
otherwise tends to render impossible, we shall say nothing of this 
consequence of hypothetical realism. 

So much for the system, which its author fondly imagines, 
•' alloivs to the skeptic no resting-place for his foot — no fulcrum 
fcyr the instrument he uses :" so much for the doctrine which 
Brown would substitute for Reid's ; — nay, which he even sup- 
poses Reid himself to have maintained. 

" Scilicet, hoc totum falsa ratione receptum est !' n 

1 [In this criticism I have spoken only of Dr. Brown's mistakes, and of these, only 
with reference to his attack on Reid. On his appropriating to himself the observa- 
tions of others, and in particular those of Destutt Tracy, I have said nothing, though 
an enumeration of these would be necessary to place Brown upon his proper level 
That, however, would require a separate discussion.] 



III. -JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANFS 
MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



(October, 1832.) 



A Manual of the History of Philosophy ; translated from the 
German of Tennemann. By the Rev. Arthur Johnson, M.A., 
late Fellow of Wadham College. 8vo. Oxford : 1832. 



'& v 



"We took up this translation with a certain favorable prepos- 
session, and felt inclined to have said all we conscientiously could 
in its behalf ; but alas ! never were expectations more completely 
disappointed, and we find ourselves constrained exclusively to 
condemn, where we should gladly have been permitted only to 
applaud. 

We were disposed to regard an English version of Tenne- 
mann's minor History of Philosophy — his " Grundriss," as a 
work of no inconsiderable utility — if competently executed : but 
in the present state of philosophical learning in this country we 
were well aware, that few were adequate to the task, and of those 
few we hardly expected that any one would be found, so disinter- 
ested, as to devote himself to a labor, of which the credit stood 
almost in an inverse proportion to the trouble. Few works, in- 
deed, would prove more difficult to a translator. A complete 
mastery of the two languages, in a philological sense, was not 
enough. There was required a comprehensive acquaintance with 
philosophy in general, and, in particular, an intimate knowledge 
of the philosophy of Kant. Tennemann was a Kantian ; he esti- 
mates all opinions by a Kantian standard ; and the language 
which he employs is significant only as understood precisely in a 
Kantian application. In stating this, we have no intention of 
disparaging the intrinsic value of the work, which, in truth, with 



104 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN'S 

all its defects, we highly esteem as the production of a sober, 
accurate, and learned mind. Every historian of philosophy must 
have his system, by reference to which he criticises the opinions 
of other thinkers. Eclecticism, as opposed to systematic philos- 
ophy, is without a meaning. For either the choice of doctrines 
must be determined by some principle, and that principle then 
constitutes a system ; or the doctrines must be arbitrarily as- 
sumed, which would be the negation of philosophy altogether. 
(We think therefore, that M. Cousin, in denominating his scheme 
distinctively the eclectic, has committed an act of injustice on 
himself.) But as it was necessary that Tennemann should be 
of some school — should have certain opinions — we think it any 
thing but a disadvantage that he was of the Kantian. The 
Critical Philosophy is a comprehensive and liberal doctrine ; and 
whatever difference may subsist with regard to its positive con- 
clusions, it is admitted, on all hands, to constitute, by its nega- 
tive, a great epoch in the history of thought. An acquaintance 
with a system so remarkable in itself, and in its influence so de- 
cisive of the character of subsequent speculation, is now a matter 
of necessity to all who would be supposed to have crossed the 
threshold of philosophy. The translation of a work of merit like 
the present, ought not therefore to be less acceptable to the En- 
glish reader, because written in the spirit and language of the 
Kantian system ; — provided, he be enabled by the translator to 
understand it. But what does this imply ? Not merely that 
certain terms in the German should be rendered by certain terms 
in the English ; for few philosophical words are to be found in 
the latter, which suggests the same analyses and combinations 
of thought as those embodied in the technical vocabulary of the 
former. The language of German philosophy has sometimes 
three or four expressions, precisely distinguishing certain gene- 
ralizations or abstractions ; where we possess only a single word, 
comprehensive of the whole, or, perhaps, several, each vaguely 
applicable to all or any. In these circumstances a direct trans- 
lation was impossible. The translator could only succeed by 
coming to a specific understanding with his reader. He behoved, 
in the first place, clearly to determine the value of the principal 
terms to be rendered ; which could only be accomplished through 
a sufficient exposition of that philosophy whose peculiar analyses 
these terms adequately expressed. In the second place, it was 
incumbent on him to show in what respects the approximating 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 105 

English term was not exactly equivalent to the original; and 
precisely to define the amplified or restricted sense, in which, by 
accommodation to the latter, the former was in his translation 
specially to he understood. 

At the same time it must he remembered, that the Grundriss 
of Tennemann was not intended by its author for an independent 
treatise. It is merely a manual or text-book ; that is, an outline 
of statements to be filled up, and fully illustrated in lectures ; — 
a text-book also for the use of students, who, from their country 
and course of education, were already more or less familiar with 
the philosophy of the Grerman schools. In translating this work 
as a system intended to be complete per se, and in favor of a 
public unlearned in philosophical discussion, and utterly ignorant 
of German metaphysics, a competent translator would thus have 
found it necessary, in almost every paragraph, to supply, to am- 
plify, and to explain. M. Cousin, indeed, when he condescended 
to translate this work (we speak only from recollection and a 
rapid glance), limited himself to a mere translation. But by him 
the treatise was intended to be only subordinate to the history 
of speculation delivered in his lectures ; and was addressed, 
among his countrymen, to a numerous class of readers, whose 
study of philosophy, and of German philosophy, he had himself 
powerfully contributed to excite. The fact, indeed, of a French 
translation, by so able an interpreter, was of itself sufficient to 
render a simple version of the work into another European tongue 
nearly superfluous ; and we were prepared to expect, that, if 
translated into English, something more would be attempted, 
than what had been already so well executed in a language with 
which every student of philosophy is familiar. 

It was, therefore, with considerable interest, that we read the 
announcement of an English translation, by a gentleman distin- 
guished for learning among the Tutors of Oxford ; whose compa- 
rative merit, indeed, had raised him to several of the most 
honorable and important offices in the nomination of the two 
"Venerable Houses." Independently of its utility, we hailed the 
publication as a symptom of the revival, in England, of a taste 
for philosophical speculation ; and this more especially, as it ema- 
nated from that University in which (since its legal constitution 
had been subverted, and all the subjects taught reduced to the 
capacity of one self-elected teacher), Psychology and Metaphysics, 
as beyond the average comprehension of the College Fellows, had 



/06 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN'S 

remained not only untaught, but their study discouraged, if not 
formally proscribed. A glance at Mr. Johnson's preface confirmed 
us in our prepossessions. "We were there, indirectly, indeed, but 
confidently, assured of his intimate acquaintance with philosophy 
in general, and German philosophy in particular; nor were we 
allowed to remain ignorant of the translator's consciousness that 
he might easily have become the rival of his author. "As far," 
he says, "as it appeared possible, I have preserved the technical 
expressions of my author, subjoining for the most part an expla- 
nation of their meaning, for the benefit of those English readers 
who may not have plunged into the profound abyss of G-erman 
metaphysics ;" — the expositor himself having of course so plunged. 
"Whenever," he adds, "it has appeared to me that an observa- 
tion of my author was of a nature impossible to be apprehended 
by any but a scholar long familiar with the disputes of the Ger- 
man lecture-rooms, I have endeavored to express the sense of it 
in other words;" — necessarily implying that the interpreter him- 
self was thus familiar. And again: — " There are parts of Tenne- 
mann, which on this account I had much rather have composed 
anew than translated, particularly the Introduction." 

The examination of a few paragraphs of the work, however, 
proved the folly of our expectations. We found it to be a bare 
translation ; and one concentrating every possible defect. We 
discovered, in the first place, that the translator was but superfi- 
cially versed in the German language ; — in the second, that he 
was wholly ignorant even of the first letter in the alphabet of Ger- 
man philosophy ; — in the third, that he was almost equally unac- 
quainted with every other philosophy, ancient and modern ; — in 
the fourth, that he covertly changes every statement of his author 
which he may not like ; in the fifth, that he silently suppresses 
every section, sentence, clause, word he is suspicious of not under- 
standing ; — and in the sixth, that he reviles, without charity, the 
philosophy and philosophers he is wholly incapable of appreciat- 
ing. — Instead of being of the smallest assistance to the student 
of philosophy, the work is only calculated to impede his progress, 
if not at once to turn him from the pursuit. From beginning to 
end, all is vague or confused, unintelligible or erroneous. We do 
not mean to insinuate that it was so intended (albeit the thought 
certainly did strike us), but, in point of fact, this translation is 
admirably calculated to turn all metaphysical speculation into 
contempt. From the character of the work, from the celebrity 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 107 

of its author and of its French translator, and even from the 
academical eminence of Mr. Johnson himself, his version would 
he probably one of the first books resorted to by the English stu- 
dent, for information concerning the nature and progress of phi- 
losophical opinions. But in proportion as the inquirer were capa- 
ble of thinking, would philosophy, as here delineated, appear to 
him incomprehensible ; and in proportion as he respected his source 
of information, would he either despair of his own capacity for 
the study, or be disgusted with the study itself. It is, indeed, by 
reason of the serious injury which this translation might occasion 
to the cause of philosophy in this country, that we find it impera- 
tive on us, by annihilating its authority, to deprive it of the 
power to hurt. 

But let us be equitable to the author while executing justice 
on his work. This translation is by no means to be taken as a 
test of the general talent or accomplishment of the translator. 
He has certainly been imprudent, in venturing on an undertak- 
ing, for which he was qualified, neither by his studies, nor by the 
character of his mind. That he should ever conceive himself so 
qualified, furnishes only another proof of the present abject state 
of philosophical erudition in this country ; for it is less to be 
ascribed to any overweening presumption in his powers, than to 
the lamentable lowness of the standard by which he rated their 
sufficiency. What Mr. Johnson has executed ill, there are prob- 
ably not six individuals in the British empire who could perform 
well.— -But to the proof of our assertions. 

That Mr. Johnson, though a quondam Professor of ancient 
Saxon, is still an under-graduate in modern German, will, with- 
out special proof, be sufficiently apparent in the course of our 
criticism. 

Of his ignorance of the Kantian philosophy, in the language 
of which the work of Tennemann is written, every page of the 
translation bears ample witness. The peculiarities of this lan- 
guage are not explained ; nay, the most important sections of the 
original, from which, by a sagacious reader, these might have 
been partially divined, are silently omitted, or professedly sup- 
pressed as unintelligible. {E. g. § 41.) Terms in the original, 
correlative and opposed, are, not only not translated by terms 
also correlative and opposed, but confounded under the same ex- 
pression, and, if not rendered at random, translated by the rule 
of contraries. To take, for example, the mental operations and 



108 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN'S. 

their objects : In a few pages we have examined, we find among 
other errors, Vernunft (Reason), though strictly used in its pro- 
per signification as opposed to Verstand, rendered sometimes by 
" Reason," but more frequently by " Understanding" or " Intel- 
lect ;" and Verstand (Understanding), in like manner, specially 
used in opposition to Vernunft (Reason), translated indifferently 
by "Understanding" or "Reason," 1 Vorstellung (Representa- 
tion), the genus of which Idee, Be griff, Anschauung are species, 
is translated "Perception," "Idea," "Apprehension," "Impres- 
sion," " Thought," " Effort," ko.—Begriff (Notion, Concept), 2 
the object of the Understanding, as opposed to Idee (Idea), the 
object of the Reason, is commonly translated "Idea," (and this 
also in treating of the Aristotelian and Kantian philosophies, in 
which this term has a peculiar meaning very different from its 
Cartesian universality), sometimes " Opinion," " Character ;" Idee 
der Vernunft (Idea of Reason) is rendered by " object of Under- 
standing," and Ziveck der Vernunft (scope or end of Reason), by 
"mental object;" while Anschauung (immediate object of Per- 
ception or Imagination) is expressed by " mental Conception" 
" Perception," &c. — Yet Mr. Johnson professes, " as far as it ap- 
peared possible, to have preserved the technical expressions of his 
author !" But of this more in the sequel. 

Of our translator's knowledge of philosophy in general, a speci- 
men may be taken from the few short notes of explanation he 
has appended. These for the most part say, in fact, nothing, or 
are merely an echo of the text ; where they attempt more, they 
are uniformly wrong. Take, for example, the two first. At p. 55, 
on the words Syncretism and Mysticism, we have this luminous 
annotation : " The force of these terms, as used by the author, 
will be sufficiently explained in the course of the work. TranslP 
At p. 70 (and on a false translation), there is the following note, 
which, though not marked as the translator's, at once indicates 
its source : "Idealism is used to denote the theory which asserts 
the reality of our ideas, 3 and from these argues the reality of ex- 



1 By the time he is half through the work, our translator seems to have become aware 
that the Kantians "make a broad distinction between the Understanding and Rea 
son." The discovery, however, had no beneficial effect on his translation. 

2 It will be seen that we do not employ Conception in the meaning attached to it 
by Mr. Stewart. 

3 The stoutest skeptic never doubted that we are really conscious of what we are 
conscious — he never doubted the subjective reality of our ideas : the doubt would an- 
nihilate itself. 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 109 

ternal objects. 1 Pantheism is the opinion that all nature partakes 
of the divine essence." 2 — To this head we may refer the author's 
continual translation of Philosophie by " Moral Philosophy," 
which he tells us is convertible with Metaphysics in general ; his 
use of the word " Experimentalism" for Empirism, Philosophy 
of Experience or of Observation; to say nothing of the incorrect- 
ness and vacillation of his whole technical language criticised by 
any standard. — Under this category may be also mentioned the 
numerous and flagrant errors in philosophical history. For ex- 
ample, Joseph Priestley {als Physiker beruehmte) is called " the 
celebrated Physician ;" and Ancillon (pere), thus distinguished 
from his son, the present Prussian prime minister, himself a dis- 
tinguished philosopher, is converted from a Calvinist pastor to a 
Catholic priest — " Father Ancillon." 

But lest we should be supposed to have selected these defects, 
we shall vindicate the rigid accuracy of our strictures by a few 
extracts. "We annex to each paragraph a literal translation, not 
such, assuredly, as we should offer, were we to attempt a com- 
plete version of the original, but such as may best enable the 
English reader to compare Mr. Johnson and Tennemann together. 
We find it convenient to make our observations in the form of 
notes : in these we pass over much that is imperfect, and can 
notice only a few of the principal mistakes. "We can not, of 
course, hope to be fully understood except by those who have 
some acquaintance with German philosophy. — We shall first quote 
paragraphs from the Introduction. 

Johnson's Version, § 1. — " A history of philosophy, to be complete, de- 
mands a preliminary inquiry respecting the character of this science, as well 
as respecting its subject-matter, 4 its form and object ; 5 and also its extent 

1 We had always imagined the proving the reality of external objects to be the ne- 
gation of Idealism — Realism. 

2 Pantheism, however, is the very denial of such participation ; it asserts that "all 
nature" and the " divine essence" are not two, one partaking of the other, but one and 
the same. 3 " Complete," inaccurate ; original, Zioeckmacssige. 

4 " Subject matter ;" original, Inhalt, i. e. contents, the complement of objects. 
Subject or Subject-matter is the materia subjecta or in qua ; and if employed for the 
object, materia objecta or circa quam, is always an abuse of philosophical language, 
though with us, unfortunately a very common one. But to commute these terms in the 
translation of a Kantian Treatise, where subject and object subjective and objective, are 
accurately contradistinguished, and where the distinction forms, in fact, the very cardi- 
nal point on which the whole philosophy turns, is to convert light into darkness, or- 
der into chaos. 

5 " Object ;" original, Zweck, end, aim, scope. The unphilosophical abuse of the 
term object for end is a comparatively recent innovation in the English and French lan- 
guages. Culpable at all times, on the present occasion it is equally inexcusable as the 
preceding. 



110 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN'S 

or comprehensiveness, its method, its importance, and the different ways in 
which it may be treated. All these particulars, with the bibliography 
belonging to it will form, together with some previous observations on the 
progress of philosophical research, 1 the subject of a general introduc- 
tion." 

Literal Translation, § 1. — "The history of philosophy, if handled in 
conformity to the end in view, presupposes an inquiry touching the con- 
ception of the science conjoining a view of its contents, form, and end, as 
also of its compass, method, importance, and the various modes in which 
it may be treated. These objects, along with the history and literature of 
the history of philosophy, combined with some preparatory observaions on 
the progress of the philosophizing reason, affords the contents of a general 
introduction to the history of philosophy." 

Johnson's Version, $ 2. — " The human mind has a tendency to attempt 
to enlarge the bounds of its knowledge, and gradually to aspire to a clear 
development of the laws and relations of nature, and of its own operations. 2 
At first it does nothing more than obey a blind desire, without accounting 
to itself sufficiently for this instinctive impulse of the understanding, 3 and 
without knowing the appropriate means to be employed, or the distance 
by which it is removed from its object. Insensibly this impulse becomes 
more deliberate, and regulates itself in proportion to the progress of the 
understanding, 4 which gradually becomes better acquainted with itself. 
Such a deliberate impulse is what we call philosophy. 5 " 

Literal Translation, § 2. — "Man, through the tendency of his Reason 
(Vernunft), strives after a systematic completion (Vollendung) of his knowl- 
edge considered in Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Modality, and conse- 
quently endeavors to raise himself to a science of the ultimate principles 
and latvs of Nature and Liberty, and of their mutucd relations. To this 
he is at first impelled by the blind feeling of a want ; he forms no adequate 
appreciation of the problem thus proposed by reason ; and knows not by 
what way, through what means, or to what extent, the end is to be at- 
tained. By degrees his efforts become more reflective, and this in propor- 



1 " Philosophic research." The translation is a vague and unmeaning version of a 
precise and significant original — philosophircn.de Vernunft. (See § 2.) 

- This sentence is mangled and wholly misunderstood. " The end of philosophy," 
says Trismegistus, " is the intuition of unity ;" and to this tendency of speculation 
toward the absolute — to the intensive completion in unity, and not to the extensive en- 
largement to infinity, of our knowledge, does Tennemaim refer. The latter is not 
philosophy in his view at all. In the translation, Vernunft (Reason), the faculty of 
the absolute in Kant's system, and here used strictly in that sense, is diluted into 
" Mind ;" and the four grand Categories arc omitted, according to which reason en- 
deavors to carry up the knowledge furnished through the senses and understanding, 
into the unconditioned. 

3 " Understanding ;" just the reverse — " Reason ;" original, Vernunft. The author 
and his translator are in these terms, always at cross purposes. " Instinctive impulse 
of the understanding*' is also wrong in itself, and wrong as a translation. The whole 
sentence, indeed, as will be seen from our version, is one tissue of error. 

4 "Understanding;" the same error; "Reason." The whole sentence is ill ren- 
dered. 

5 "Philosophy;" das Philosophircn, not philosophy vaguely, hut precisely, philo- 
sephic act — philosophizing. Strehcn here, and before, is also absurdly translated 
" impulse :" a " deliberate impulse !" a round square ! 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. Ill 

tion to the gradual development of the self-consciousness of reason. This 
reflective effort we denominate the act o£ philosophizing." 

Johnson's Version, § 3. — " Thereupon arise various attempts to approxi- 
mate this mental object of the understanding, 1 attempts more or less differ- 
ing in respect of their principles, their methods, their consequences, 2 their 
extent, and, in general, their peculiar objects. In all these attempts, 
(which take the name of Philosophic Systems, when they present them- 
selves in a scientific form, and the value of which is proportionate to the 
degree of intelligence manifested by each particular philosopher), we trace 
the gradual development of the human understanding, 3 according to its 
peculiar laws.' - 

Literal Translation, § 3. — " Out of this effort arise the various attempts 
of thinkers to approximate to this Idea of reason, or to realize it in thought ; 
attempts more or less differing from each other in principle, in method, 
in logical consequence, in result, and in the comprehension and general 
character of their objects. In these attempts (which, when they present 
themselves in a form scientifically complete, are denominated philosophic 
systems, and possess a value, varying in proportion to the pitch of intellect- 
ual cultivation, and to the point of view of the several speculators) the 
thinking reason developes itself in conformity to its peculiar laws." 

Johnson's Version, k 4. — " But the development of human reason is 
itself subject to external conditions, and is sometimes seconded, sometimes 
retarded, or suspended, according to the different impressions it receives 
from without." 4 

Literal Translation, k 4. — "But the development of human reason 
does not take place without external excitement : it is consequently 
dependent upon external causes, in as much as its activity through the 
different direction given it from without, is now promoted in its efforts, 
now checked and held back." 

Johnson's Version, § 5. — " To give an account of the different works 
produced by the understanding, thus in the progress of improvement, and 
favored or impeded by external circumstances, is, in fact, to compose a 
history of philosophy." 5 

Literal Translation, § 5. — "An account of the manifold efforts made 
to realize that Idea of reason (§ 2) in Matter and Form, (in other words, 
to bring philosophy as a science to bear), efforts arising from the develop- 
ment of reason, and promoted or held in check by external causes — con- 
stitutes, in fact, the History of Philosophy." 

Johnson's Version, § 6. — " The subject matter 6 of the history of philos- 
ophy, is both external and internal. The internal or immediate embraces, 
1. The efforts continually made by the understanding to attain to a per- 
ception of the first principles of the great objects of its pursuit (§ 2), with 
many incidental details relating to the subject of investigation, the degree 
of ardor or remissness which from time to time have prevailed ; with the 

1 "Object of the Understanding ;" the opposite again; original, Idee der Vernunft. 
1 " Consequences ;" wrong ; Consequcnz. 

3 " Understanding," usual blunder for Reason, and twice in this §. It is so frequent 
in the sequel, that we can not afford to notice it again. The whole paragraph is in 
other respects mutilated, and inaccurately rendered. 

4 Mangled and incorrect. 5 Ibid 

" Subject-matter;" Stuff, matter, or object-matter: see note on $ 1. 



112 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN'S 

influence of external causes to interest men in such pursuits, or the absence 
of them. 1 2. The effects of philosophy, or the views, methods, and systems 
it has originated ; effects varying with the energies out of which they 
sprang. In these we see the understanding avail itself of materials per- 
petually accumulating toward constituting philosophy a science, or rules 
and principles for collecting materials to form a scientific whole : or finally, 
maxims relating to the method to be pursued in such researches. 2 3. And 
lastly : We observe the development of the understanding as an instrument 
vi' philosophy, that is to say, the progress of the understanding toward 
researches in which it depends solely on itself; in other words, its 
gradual progress toward the highest degree of independence; a progress 
which may he observed in individuals, in nations, and in the whole race 
of man." 3 

Literal Translation, § 6. " The matter about which the history of 
philosophy is conversant, is consequently both internal and external. The 
internal or proximate matter, comprehends, in the first place, the contin- 
ued application of reason to the investigation of the ultimate principles 
and laws of Nature and Liberty ; for therein consists the act of ' plvilosoplviz- 
ing ($ 2). And here are to be observed great differences in regard to 
subject and object — to the extensive application and intensive force of the 
philosophizing energy — to internal amis and motives (Avhether generous or 
interested) — as likewise to external causes and occasions. It comprehends, 
secondly, the products of the philosophizing act, in other words, philo- 
sophic views, methods, and systems (k 3), which are as manifold as the 
efforts out of which they spring. Through these reason partly obtains 
materials becoming gradually purer, for philosophy as science, pa illy rules 
and principles by which to bind up these materials into a scientific whole, 
partly, in fine, maxims for our procedure in the search after philosophy. 
Thirdly, it comprehends the development of reason, as the instrument of 
philosophy, i. e. the excitation of reason to spontaneous inquiry, in conform- 
ity' to determined laws through internal inclination, and external occa- 
sion, and herein the gradual progress manifested by individuals, nations, 
and the thinking portion of mankind. This therefore constitutes an im- 
portant anthropological phasis of the history of philosophy." 

Johnson's Version, § 7. " The external matter consists in the causes, 
events, and circumstances which have influenced the development of 
philosophic reason, and the nature of its productions. To this order of facts 
belong : 1 . The individual history of philosophers, that is to say, the de- 
gree, the proportion, and the direction of their intellectual powers : the 
sphere of their studies and their lives, the interests which swayed them, 
and even their moral characters. 4 2. The influence of external causes, 
that is to say, the character, and the degree of mental cultivation preva- 
lent in the countries to which they belonged ; the prevailing spirit of the 
times ; and, to descend still farther, the climate and properties of the 
country ; its institutions, religion, and language. 6 3. The influence of 

1 The whole sentence execrable in all respects ; we can not criticise it in detail. 

2 In this sentence there are nine errors, besides imperfections. 

:1 Jn this sentence, what is suffered to remain is worse treated than what is thrown 
out. 

4 In this sentence there are four inaccuracies. 

" In this sentence there are two omissions, one essential to the meaning, and one 
in accuracy. 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 113 

individuals in consequence of the admiration and imitation they have ex- 
cited, by their doctrines or example ; an influence which betrays itself in 
the matter as well as *in the manner of their schools." 1 (Bacon, Locke, 
Leibnitz.) 

Literal Translation, § 7. " The external tnatter consists in those 
causes, events, and circumstances, which have exerted an influence on the 
development of the philosophizing reason, and the complexion of its pro- 
ductions. To this head belong, in the first place, the individual genius of 
the philosopher, i. e. the degree, the mutual relation, and the direction of 
his intellectual faculties, dependent thereon his sphere of view and opera- 
tion, and the interest with which it inspires him, and withal even his 
moral character. In the second place, the influence of external causes 
on individual genius, such as the character and state of cultivation of 
the nation, the dominant spirit of the age, and less proximately the cli- 
mate and natural qualities of the country, education, political constitution, 
religion, and language. In the third place, the effect of individual genius 
itself (through admiration and imitation, precept and example) on the in- 
terest, the direction, the particular objects, the kind and method of the 
subsequent speculation— an influence variously modified in conformity to 
intellectual character, to the consideration and celebrity of schools estab- 
lished, to writings, their form and their contents." (Bacon, Locke, 
Leibnitz). 

Johnson's Version, § 9. "History in general is distinguished, when 
properly so called, from Annals, Memoirs, &c, by its form : i. e. by the 
combination of its incidents, and their circumstantial development." 2 

Literal Translation, § 9. " History, in the stricter signification, is 
distinguished by reference to its form, from mere annals, memoirs, &c, 
through the concatenation of events, and their scientific exposition," [i. e. 
under the relation of causes and effects.] 

Passing now to the body of the book :— we shall first take a 
paragraph from the account of Aristotle's philosophy, in which an 
Oxford Tutor and Examining Master may be supposed at home. 
With the exception, however, of four popular treatises, we sus- 
pect that the Stagirite is as little read or understood in Oxford, 
as in Edinburgh. 

Johnson's Version, § 140. — " Aristotle possessed in a high degree the 
talents of discrimination and analysis, added to the most astonishing knowl- 



* Compare the literal version ! 

2 " Circumstantial development ; pragmatische Darstellung. No word occurs more 
frequently in the historical and philosophical literature of Germany and Holland, than 
pragniatisch, or pragmaticus, and Pragmatismus. So far from pragniatisch being tan- 
tamount to "circumstantial," and opposed (see § 12 of translation) to " scientific," the 
word is peculiarly employed to denote that form of history, which, neglecting circum- 
stantial details, is occupied in the scientific evolution of causes and effects. It is, in 
fact, a more definite term than the histoire raisonee of the French. The word in this 
signification was originally taken from Polybius j but founded, as is now acknowledged, 
on an erroneous interpretation. (See Schweigh. ad Polyb. L. i. c. 2 — C. D. Beckii 
Diss. Pragmaticm Histories apud vctercs ratio et judicium — and Borgeri Oratio de His- 
toria Pragmatica). 

H 



114 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN'S 

edge of books, 1 and the works of Nature. To the latter, more especially, 
he had devoted himself. He rejected the doctrine of ideas ; maintaining 
that all our impressions and thoughts, and even the highest efforts 2 of the 
understanding, are the fruit of experience ; that the world is eternal, even 
in its farm, and not the work of a creative providence. In the theory of 
composition he drew a distinction between the matter, which he referred 
to philosophy, and the form, which he derived from poetry. 3 Instead of 
following his master in his way of reasoning from the universal to the par- 
ticular, he always takes the opposite course, and infers the first from the 
latter. His writings contain valuable remarks on the system of his pre- 
decessors ; his oivn being that of Empiricism, modified in a slight degree 
by the Rationalism of Plato." 

Literal Translation, $ 140. — " Aristotle possessed in a high degree the 
talent of discrimination, and an extensive complement of knowledge derived 
from books, and from his own observation of nature. The investigation of 
nature was, indeed, his peculiar aim. He consequently rejected Ideas, and 
admitted that all mental representations (Vorstellungen), even the highest 
of the understanding, are, as to their matter given, being elaborated out 
of experience ; and that the universe is eternal even in its form, and not 
fashioned by a plastic intelligence. He had not a genius (Sinn) like Plato 
for the Ideal [the object of reason proper] but was more the philosojjher of 
the understanding (Verstand) ; one, who in his intellectual system (Ver- 
standessystem) — an Empirism modified by Plato's Rationalism — did not, 
like that philosopher, proceed from the universal to the particular, but 
from the particular to the universal." 

Johnson's, Version, k 145. — " Physiology (sic) is indebted to Aristotle 
for its first cultivation ; for an essay, imperfect indeed, but built upon ex- 
periment associated with theory. The soul he pronounced to be exclu- 
sively the active principle of life ; the primitive form of every body capa- 
ble of life, i. e. organized His remarks on the characteristics 

of our means of knowledge, that is, the senses, 4 are deserving of particular 
attention; as well as his observations on the Common Sense; and on Con- 
sciousness 6 (the existence of which he was the first distinctly to recognize) ; 

1 Tennemann does not make Aristotle a bibliographer. 

2 The question of origin refers not to the subjective efforts of our faculties, but to 
the objective knowledge about which these efforts are conversant. The sentence is 
otherwise mutilated, and its sense destroyed. 

3 What this may possibly mean we confess ourselves at a loss to guess. Is it an 
attempt at translating some interpolation of Wendt in the last edition of the Grund- 
riss 1 — ours is the fourth. It can not surely be intended for a version of what is other- 
wise omitted by Mr. Johnson. 

4 " On the characteristics of our means of knowledge, that is, the senses, are," &c. 
The original is — ueber die Acusscrungcn der Erkenntnissthaetigkcit d. i. ucber die 
Sinnc, den Gcmcinsinn, &c. Sec Literal Translation. 

6 Neither by Aristotle nor by any other Greek philosopher, was Consciousness falsely 
analyzed into a separate faculty, and the Greek language contains no equivalent ex- 
pression ; a want which, considering the confusion and error which the word (however 
convenient) has occasioned among modern philosophers, we regard as any thing but 
a defect. That we can not know without knowing that we know, and that these are 
not two functions of distinct faculties, but one indivisible energy of the same power, 
this is well stated by Aristotle in explaining the function of the Common Sense ; and 
to this Tennemann correctly refers. It is the error of his translator to make Aristotle 
treat explicitly of consciousness by name. 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 115 

on Imagination, Memory, and Recollection. Perception is the faculty 
which conveys to us the forms of objects. Thought is the perception of" 
forms or ideas by means of ideas, 1 which presupposes the exercise of Sensa- 
tion and Imagination. Hence a passive and an active Intelligence. The 
last is imperishable (Immortality independent of Conscience 3 or Memory.) 
The thinking faculty is an energy distinct from the body, derived from 
without, resembling the elementary matter 3 of the stars Enjoy- 
ment is the result of the complete development of an energy, which at the 
same time perfects that energy.'' The most noble of all enjoyments is the 
result of Reason." 

Literal Translation, $ 145. — " Psychology is indebted to Aristotle for 
its first, though still imperfect, scientific treatment upon the principles of 
experience, although with these he has likewise combined sundry specula- 
tive views. The soul is the efficient principle of life (life taken in its most 
extensive signification) — the primitive form of every physical body suscepti 

ble of animation, i. e. of one organically constituted His 

remarks are especially interesting on the manifestation of our cognitive 
energies, i. e. on the Senses — on the Common Sense, the first approach to a 
clear indication of Consciousness (die erste deutlichere Andeutung des Be- 
wusstseyns) — on Imagination, Reminiscence, and Memory. The Percep- 
tive and Imaginative act (Anschauen) is an apprehension of the forms of 
objects ; and Thought, again, an apprehension of the forms of those forms 
which Sense and Imagination presuppose. Hence a passive and an act- 
ive Intellect or Understanding. To the latter belongs indestructibility 
(immortality without consciousness and recollection.) Thought is, indeed, 
a faculty distinct from the corporeal powers, infused into man from with- 
out, and analogous to the element of the stars. Pleasure is 

the result of the perfect exertion of a power ; — an exertion by which again 
the power itself is perfected. The noblest pleasures originate in Reason. 
Practical Reason, Will, is, according to Aristotle, and on empirical princi- 
ples, determined by notions [of the Understanding], without a higher ideal 
principle [of Reason properly so called."] 

We conclude our extracts by a quotation from the chapter on 

Kant. 

Johnson's Version, § 373. — "His (Kant's) attention being awakened by 
the Skepticism of Hume, he was led to remark the very different degree of 

1 No meaning, or a wrong meaning. The term Idea also, in the common modern 
signification, should have been carefully avoided, under the head of Aristotle. 

2 Conscience is not used in English for Consciousness. "Was Mr. Johnson copying 
from the French 1 

3 The word " matter" is here wrong. 

4 " Development of an energy" and " perfecting an energy," in relation to Aristotle's 
doctrine of the Pleasurable, is incorrect. The word in the original is, as it ought to 
be, Kraft, power, or faculty. The term " complete" also does not render the original 
so well as " perfect." " The perfect exertion of a power" is here intended to denote, 
both subjectively the full and free play of the faculty in opposition to its languid ex- 
ercise or its too intense excitement, and objectively, the presence of all conditions, 
with the absence of all impediments, to its highest spontaneous energy. Aristotle's 
doctrine of Pleasure, though never yet duly appreciated, is one of the most important 
generalizations in his whole philosophy. The end of the section is otherwise much 
mutilated. 



116 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN'S 

certainty belonging to the deductions of Moral Philosophy, 1 and the con- 
clusions of Mathematics ; and to speculate upon the causes of this differ- 
ence. Metaphysics, of course, claimed his regard ; but he was led to be- 
lieve, that as yet the very threshold of the science had not been passed. 
An examination of the different philosophical systems, and particularly 
of the jejune Dogmatism of Wolf, led him to question whether, antece- 
dently to any attempt at Dogmatic philosophy, it might not be necessary 
to investigate the possibility of philosophical knowledge, and he concluded 
that to this end an inquiry into the different sources of information, 3 and 
a critical examination of their origin and employment, were necessary ; in 
which respect he proposed to complete the task undertaken by Locke. He 
laid down, in the first place, that Moral Philosophy and Mathematics arc, 
in their origin, intellectttal sciences. 3 Intellectual knowledge is distin- 
guished from experimental by its qualities of necessity and universality. 
On the possibility of intellectual knowledge depends that of the philoso- 
phical sciences. 4 These are either synthetic or analytic ; the latter of which 
methods is dependent on the first. 5 What then is the principle of synthet- 
ical a priori knowledge in contradistinction to experimental ; which is 
founded on observation 1 The existence of a priori knowledge is deduci- 
ble from the mathematics, as well as from the testimony of common sense ; 6 
and it is with such knowledge that metaphysics are chiefly conversant. A 
science, therefore, which may investigate with strictness the possibility of 
such knowledge, and the principles of its employment and application, is 
necessary for the direction of the human mind, and of the highest practical 
utility. Kant pursued this course of inquiry, tracing a broad line of dis- 
tinction between the provinces of Moral Philosophy and the Mathematics, 
and investigating more completely than had yet been done, the faculty of 

1 "Moral Philosophy ;" Philosophic. Thrice in this §. 

2 "Information;" Erkcnnlnissc. The version is incorrect; even Knowledge does 
not adequately express the original, both because it is not also plural, and because it 
is of a less emphatically subjective signification. Cognitions would be the best trans- 
lation, could we venture also on the verb cognize as a version of Erkcnncn. 

3 "Intellectual sciences;" rationale oder Vcrnunft-Wisscnchaftcn. Intcllcclus or 
Intcllekt is, in the language of German philosophers, synonymous with Vcrstand, Un- 
derstanding. The translator, therefore, here renders, as he usually does, one term of 
the antithesis by the other. The same capital error is repeated in the two following 
sentences. 

4 " Philosophical sciences ;" — philosophischc Erkcnnlnissc, philosophic knowledges 
or cognitions. This and the following errors would have been avoided by an acquaint- 
ance with the first elements of the critical philosophy. 

6 "The latter of which methods is dependent on the first." These few words con- 
tain two great mistakes. In the first place, there is no reference in the original to any 
synthetic and analytic methods, but to Kant's thrice celebrated distinction of synthetic 
and analytic cognitions or judgments, a distinction from which the critical philosophy 
departs. In the second, there is nothing to excuse the error that analytic cognitions 
are founded on synthetic. Analytic cognitions are said by Tenncmann to rest on the 
primary law of thought, i. e. on the principle of contradiction. (See Critik d. r. V. 
p. 189, ets.) — The present is an example of the absurdity of translating this work with- 
out an explanatory amplification. The distinction of analytic and synthetic judgments 
is to the common reader wholly unintelligible from the context. 

6 "Common sense." Kant was not the philosopher to appeal to common sense. 
Die gemeine Erkenntniss is common knowledge, in opposition to mathematical. (See 
Crit. d. r. V. Einl. $ 5.) 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 117 

knowledge. 1 He remarked that synthetical a 'priori knowledge imparts a 
formal character to knowledge in general, and can only be grounded in 
laws affecting the Individual, and in the consciousness which he has of the 
harmony and unison of his faculties. 2 He then proceeds to analyze the 
particulars of our knowledge, and discriminates between its elementary 
parts so often confounded in practice, with a view to ascertain the true 
nature of each species : the characteristics of necessity and universality 
which belong to a priori knowledge being his leading principles." 3 

Literal Translation, § 381. — " Awakened by the skepticism of Hume, 
Kant directed his attention on the striking difference in the result of medi- 
tation in Mathematics and in Philosophy, and upon the causes of this dif- 
ference. Metaphysic justly attracted his consideration, but he was con- 
vinced that its threshold had yet been hardly touched. Reflection, and a 
scrutiny of the various philosophical systems, especially of the shallow 
dogmatism of the Wolfian school, suggested to him the thought, that, pre- 
vious to all dogmatical procedure in philosophy, it was necessary, first 
to investigate the possibility of a philosophical knowledge ; and that to 
this end, an inquiry into the different sources of our knowledge — into its 
origin — and its employment (in other words, Criticism), was necessary. 
Thus did he propose to accomplish the work which had been commenced 
by Locke. Philosophy and mathematics, he presupposed to be, in respect 
of their origin, rational sciences, or sciences of reason. Rational knowl- 
edge is distinguished from empirical by its character of necessity and uni- 
versality. With its possibility stands or falls the possibility of philosophi- 
cal knowledge, which is of two kinds — -synthetic and analytic. The lat- 
ter rests on the fundamental law of thought ; but ivhat is the principle 
of syntlietic knoivledge a priori, as contrasted with empirical, of which 
perception is the source ? That such knowledge exists, is guaranteed by 
the truth of mathematical, and even of common knowledge, and the effort 
of reason in metaphysic is mainly directed to its realization. There is 
therefore a science of the highest necessity and importance, which investi- 
gates, on principles, the possibility, the foundation, and the employment 
of such knowledge. Kant opened to himself the way to this inquiry, by 
taking a strict line of demarkation between philosophy and mathematics. 
and by a more profound research into the cognitive faculties than had 
hitherto been brought to bear ; while his sagacity enabled him to divine, 
that synthetic knowledge a priori coincides with the form of our knowl- 
edge, and can only be grounded in the laws of the several faculties which 
co-operate in the cognitive act. Then, in order fully to discover these forms 
of knowledge, according to the guiding principles of universality and neces- 
sity, he undertook a dissection of knowledge, and distinguished [in reflec- 
tion] what in reality is only presented combined, for the behoof of scien- 
tific knowledge." 

Johnson's Version, § 375.—. . . " The laws of ethics are superior to the 
empirical and determinable free-will which we enjoy in matters of practice, 
and assume an imperative character, occupying the chief place in practi- 



1 This sentence is inaccurately rendered, and not duly connected with the next. 

2 This sentence is incomprehensible to all ; but its absurdity can be duly apprecia- 
ted only by those who know something of the Kantian philosophy. 

3 The same observation is true of this sentence and of the following section, which 
we leave without note or comment. 



118 JOHNSON'S TRANSLATION OF TENNEMANN'S 

cal philosophy. This categorical principle becomes an absolute law of 
universal obligation, giving to our conduct an ultimate end and spring of 
action ; which is not to be considered as a passion or affection, but as a 
moral sense of respect for law." 

Literal Translation, § 383. — . . . "The Moral Law, as opposed to an 
empirically determined volition, appears under the character of a Categori- 
cal Imperative, (absolute Ought [unconditional duty],) and takes its place 
at the very summit of practical philosophy. This imperative, as the uni- 
versal rule of every rational will, prescribes with rigorous necessity an 
universal conformity to the lata [of duty] ; and thereby establishes the 
supreme absolute end and motive of conduct, which is not a pathological 
feeling [blind and mechanical], but a reverence for the law [of duty, ra- 
tional and free]." 

That Mr. Johnson makes no scruple of violating the good faith 
of a translator, is a serious accusation — but one unfortunately 
true. This, indeed, is principally shown, in the history of those 
philosophers whose speculations are unfavorable to revealed relig- 
ion. — Speaking of Hume, Tennemann says: — "On the empirical 
principles of Locke, he investigated with a profoundly penetrating 
genius the nature of man as a thinking, and as an active being. 
This led him through a train of consequent reasoning to the 

skeptical result that, &c And in these investigations of 

Hume, philosophical skepticism appeared with a terrific force, 
profundity (Grundlichkeit), and logical consequence, such as had 
never previously been witnessed, and at the same time in a form 
of greater precision, perspicuity, and elegance." Thus rendered 
by Mr. Johnson : — "Taking the experimental principles of Locke 
as the foundation of his system, he deduced from them many 
acute but specious conclusions respecting the nature and condi- 
tion of man, as a reasonable agent. He was led on by arguments, 
the fallacy of which is lost in their ingenuity, to the inference 

that, &c The investigations of Hume were recommended, 

not only by a great appearance of logical argumentation, but by 
an elegance and propriety of diction, and by all those graces of 
style which he possessed in so eminent a degree, and which made 
his skepticism more dangerous than it deserved to be." — The same 
tampering with the text we noticed in the articles on Hobbes and 
Lord Herbert of Cherbury. — We hardly attribute to intention 
what Mr. Johnson says of Krug, that "he appears to add little 
to Kant, except a superior degree of obscurity." Krug is known 
to those versed in German philosophy, not only as a very acute, 
but as a very lucid writer. In his autobiography, we recollect, 
he enumerates 'perspicuity as the first of his three great errors as 



MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 119 

an author ; reverence for common sense, and contempt of cant, 
being the other two. Tennemann attributes to him "uncommon 
clearness." 

As a specimen of our translator's contemptuous vituperation 
of some illustrious thinkers, we shall quote his notes on Fichte 
and Schelling, of whose systems, it is almost needless to say, his 
translation proves him to have understood nothing. 

After reversing in the text what Tennemann asserts of Fichte's 
unmerited persecution, we have the following note : — " It is pain- 
ful to be the instrument of putting on record so much of nonsense 
and so much of blasphemy as is contained in the pretended phi- 
losophy of Fichte; the statement, however, will not be without 
its good, if the reader be led to reflect on the monstrous absurdi- 
ties which men will believe at the suggestion of their own fancies, 
who have rejected the plain evidences of Christianity." [Fichte 
was, for his country and generation, an almost singularly pious 
Christian. He was even attacked by the theologians — for his 
orthodoxy.] — On Schelling's merits we have the following digni- 
fied decision : — " The grave remarks of the author on this absurd 
theory, might perhaps have been worthily replaced by the pithy 
criticism of Mr. Burchell, apud the Vicar of "Wakefield, as applied 
to other absurdities, videlicet — Fudge— Fudge — Fudge." 

But enough! — We now take our leave of Mr. Johnson, recom- 
mending to him a meditation on the excellent motto he has pre- 
fixed to his translation: — "Difficile est in philosophia pauca esse 
ei nota, cui non sint aut pleraque aut omnia." 



IV.— LOGIC. 

IN REFERENCE TO THE RECENT ENGLISH 
TREATISES ON THAT SCIENCE. 1 



(April, 1833.) 

1. Artis Logicce Rudimenta, with Illustrative Observations on 

each Section. Fourth edition, with Additions. 12mo. Ox- 
ford : 1828. 

2. Elements of Logic. By Richard Whately, D.D., Principal 

of St. Alban's Hall, and late Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. 
Third edition. 8vo. London : 1829. 

3. Introduction to Logic, from Dr. Whately'' 's Elements of Logic. 

By the Rev. Samuel Hinds, M.A., of Queen's College, and 
Vice-Principal of St. Alban's Hall, Oxford. 12mo. Oxford : 
1827. 

4. Outline of a New System of Logic, with a Critical Exam- 
ination of Dr. Whately 's "Elements of Logic," by George 
Bentham, Esq. 8vo. London : 1827. 

5. An Examination of some Passages in Dr. Whately's Ele- 
ments of Logic. By George Cornewall Lewis, Esq., Stu- 
dent of Christ Church. 8vo. Oxford : 1829. 

6. A Treatise on Logic on the Basis of Aldrich, with Illustra- 

tive Notes by the Rev. John Huyshe, M.A., Brazen-nose 
College, Oxford. 12mo. Second edition. Oxford : 1833. 

7. Questions on AldricWs Logic, ivith References to the most 
Popular Treatises. 12mo. Oxford : 1829. 

8. Key to Questions on Aldrich. s Logic. 1 2mo. Oxford : 1829. 

9. Introduction to Logic. 12mo. Oxford : 1830. 

10. Aristotle's Philosophy. (An article in Vol. iii. of the Seventh 
Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, now publishing.) 
By the Rev. Renn Dickson Hampden, M.A., late Fellow of 
Oriel College, Oxford. 4to. Edinburgh : 1832. 



1 [In French by M. Peisse ; in Italian bv S. Lo Gatto ; in Cross's Selections.] 

m 



FORTUNE OF LOGICAL STUDY IN GREAT BRITAIN. 121 

Nothing, we think, affords a more decisive proof of the oblique 
and partial spirit in which philosophy has been cultivated in 
Britain, for the last century and a half, than the combined per- 
version and neglect, which Logic — the science of the formal laws 
of thought — has experienced during that period. Since the time, 
and principally, we suspect, through the influence of Locke (who, 
as Leibnitz observed, "sprevit logtbam non intellexit"), no coun- 
try has been so poor in this department of philosophy, whether 
we estimate our dialectical literature by its mass or by its quality. 
Loth to surrender the subject altogether, yet unable, from their 
own misconception of its nature, to vindicate to logic, on the 
proper ground, its paramount importance, as a science a priori, 
distinct and independent: the few logical authors who appeared, 
endeavored, on the one hand, by throwing out what belonged to 
itself, of an unpopular and repulsive character, to obviate disgust ; 
and, on the other, by interpolating what pertained to other 
branches of philosophy — here a chapter of psychology, there a 
chapter of metaphysic, &c. — to conciliate to the declining study 
a broader interest than its own. The attempt was too irrational 
to succeed ; and served only to justify the disregard it was meant 
to remedy. This was to convert the interest of science with the 
interest of amusement: this was not to amplify logic, but to de- 
form philosophy ; by breaking down their boundaries, and running 
its several departments into each other. 

In the Universities, where Dialectic (to use that term in its 
universality) once reigned "The Queen of Arts," the failure of 
the study is more conspicuously remarkable. 

In those of Scotland the Chairs of Logic have for generations 
taught any thing rather than the science which they nominally 
profess — a science, by the way, in which the Scots have not lat- 
terly maintained the reputation once established by them in all, 1 

1 "Les Escossois sont bons Philosophes" — pronounced the Dictator of Letters. — 
(Scaligerana Secunda). — Servetus had previously testified to their character for logical 
subtility: "Dialecticis argutiis sibi blandiuntur." (Prcef. in Ptolem. Geogr. 1533.) 
[My learned friend, Mr. James Broun of the Temple, shows me that the unhappy 
heretic had here only copied the words of Erasmus — a far higher authority. (End. 
Moria.)] — For a considerable period, indeed, there was hardly to be found a continental 
University of any note, without the appendage of a Scottish Professor of Philosophy 
[In the Key to Barclay's Satyricon, it is said of Cardinal Du Perron, under Henry IV . 
" Ejus- solicitudine, in Gallia plures Scoti celebri nomine bonas artes professi sunt, 
quam in ipsa Scotia foventur et aluntur a Rege." Sir Thomas Urquhart is less eu- 
phuistic than usual, in his diction of the following passage: "There was a professor 
of the Scottish nation, within these sixteen years, in Somure, who spoke Greek with 
as great ease as ever Cicero did Latin, and could have expressed himself in it as well 



122 LOGIC. 

and still retained in other departments of philosophy. To the 
philosophers, indeed, of our country, we must confess, that, in 
great part is to be attributed the prevalence of the erroneous 
notions on this subject promulgated by Locke. 

No system of logic deserving of notice, in fact, ever appear- 
ed in Scotland; and for Scottish logical writers of any merit, 
we must travel back for more than two centuries to three 
contemporary authors, whose abilities, like those, indeed, of 
almost all the more illustrious scholars of their nation, were 
developed under foreign influence — to Robert Balfour, 1 Mark 

and as promptly as in any other language, [Urquhart refers to Johannes Camcro, the 
celebrated theologian — and as he himself calls him, the "bibliotheca movens"] ; yet 
the most of the Scottish nation never having astricted themselves so much to the pro- 
priety of words as to the knowledge of things, [?] where there was one preceptor of 
languages among them, there were above forty professors of philosophy. Nay, to so 
high a pitch did the glory of the Scottish nation attaine over all the parts of France, 
and for so long a time together continued in that attained height, by vertue of an as- 
cendant, the French considered the Scots to have, above all nations, in matter of their 
subtlety in philosophical disceptations, that there have not been, till of late, for these 
several ages together, any lord, gentleman, or other in all that country, who being 
desirous to have his son instructed in the principles of philosophy, would intrust him 
to the discipline of any other than a Scottish master; of whom they were no less 
proud than Philip was of Aristotle, or Tullius of Cratippus. And if it occurred, as 
very often it did, that a pretender to a place in any French university, having in his 
tender years been subferulary to some other kind of schooling, should enter into com- 
petition with another aiming at the same charge and dignity, whose learning flowed 
from a Caledonian source, commonly the first was rejected, and the other preferred ; 
education of youth in all grounds of literature under teachers of the Scottish nation 
being then held by all the inhabitants of France to have been attended, cccteris -paribus, 
with greater proficiency than any other manner of breeding subordinate to the docu- 
ments of those of another country. Nor are the French the only men who have har- 
boured this good opinion of the Scots in behalf of their inward abilities, but many 
times the Spaniards, Italians, Flemins, Dutch, Hungarians, Sweds, and Polonians, 
have testified their being of the same mind, by the promotions whereunto, for their 
learning, they, in all those nations at several times, have attained." {Jewel, 1652, 
Works, p. 258). As in literature and philosophy, so in war. Scots officers, in great 
numbers, and of distinguished merit, figured in the opposite armies of Gustavus and 
Ferdinand — especially of the former ; yet the commandant of the Fort of Egra, 
and all the executioners or murderers of Wallenstein. were Scots — with a sprinkling of 
Irish — gentlemen. The Scots, too, were long the merchants of Poland, and the " trav- 
eling merchants," AngHce, peddlers, of Europe. On this, see " Hercules tuam fidem," 
(1608, p. 125) — one of the squibs against Scioppius in the Scaligeran controversy.] 
1 ["'We find in La Logiquc, oil art de discourir ct raisonncr of Scipio Dupleix, Royal 
Counselor, dec, a handsome eulogy of Balfour. The author declares that he draws 
his doctrine from Aristotle, and his most celebrated interpreters. ' Sur tous lesquels 
je pris-e M. Robert Balfor, gentilhommc Escossois, tant pour sa rare ct profonde doc- 
trine aux sciences et aux langues, que pour l'integrite dc scs mceurs. Aussi luy doys- 
je lc pcu de scauoir que j'ay acquis, ayant cu l'honneur do jouir familierement de sa 
douce et vrayement philosophique conversation.' {Preface, f. 5.) Farther on, and in 
the body of the work (f. 25.), he calls ' M. Robert Balfor, Ie premier Philosophe de 
nostre memoire,' &c. This Logic of Dupleix is, with L'Organe of Philip Canaye, 
and the Dialccliquc of Ramus, one of the oldest treatises on this science written in 
French. It is a very competent analysis of the Organon. The third edition is of 1607 ; 
the first probably published at the close of the sixteenth century." — M. Peisse. — My 



FORTUNE OF LOGICAL STUDY IN CAMBRIDGE. 123 

Duncan, 1 and William Chalmers, 2 Professors in the Universities 
of Bordeaux, Saumur, and Anjou. In Cambridge the fortune of 

copy of Scipio Dupleix's Logic is of the second edition, " enlarged by the author," and 
in 1604. From the "Privilege," at the end, it appears that the first edition was of 
1600. As M. Peisse remarks, it is an excellent work. Balfour's learned countryman 
and contemporary, Thomas Dempster, in his Historia Ecclesiastica (§ 209) speaks of 
him, as " sui seculi phoenix, Grace et Latine doctissimus, philosophus et mathematicus 
priscis conferendus," &c. &c. ; and writing in Italy, he notices that Balfour was then 
(1627) living, having been for thirty years Principal of the College of Bourdeaux. 
Balfour's Cleomedes, edition and commentary are eulogized to the highest by Barthius 
and Bake; while his Council of Nice, and the notes, have gained him a distinguished 
reputation among theologians. His series of Commentaries on the Logic, Physics, 
and Ethics of Aristotle, were published at Bourdeaux, in 4°, and are all of the highest 
value. The second edition of that on the Organon appeared in 1620, and extends to 
1055 pages. It is, however, a comparatively rare book, which may excuse subsequent 
editors and logicians for their ignorance of its existence.] 

1 [It is impossible to speak too highly of the five books of the Institutio Logica by 
Mark Duncan, "Doctor of Philosophy and Medicine." The work, which extends 
only to about 280 octavo pages, was at least five times printed ; the first edition ap- 
pearing in 1612, at Saumur, for the use of that University, was republished at Paris, 
in the following year. It forms the basis of Burgersdyk's Institutiones Logica (Ley- 
den, 1626), who had been Duncan's colleague in Saumur ; and that celebrated logician 
declares that from it (speaking only of the first or unimproved edition), he had received 
more assistance than from all other systems of the science put together. In fact, 
Duncan's Institutions are, in many respects, better even than his own ; and were there 
now any intelligent enthusiasm for such studies, that rare and little book would incon- 
tinently be republished. I have not seen the author's Synopsis Ethiccc. Duncan, as 
physician, figures in the celebrated process of Urban Grandier and the Nuns of Laudun 
(1634). Medical practice seems indeed to have withdrawn him from philosophical 
speculation. James VI. nominated Duncan Physician Royal, and he would have 
transferred himself to London, but his wife and her family were averse from migrating 
"to a ferocious nation and an inclement sky." His elder brother, William, as Dempster 
assures us, "bonis artibus supra hoc seculum, et maxime Gra?cis Uteris ad miraculum 
imbutus," was distinguished also as Professor of Philosophy and Physic in the schools 
of Tholouse and Montauban. His son, Mark also, but better known under the name 
of M. des Cerisantes, was a kind of Admirable Crichton ; his life is more romantic 
than a romance. He obtained high celebrity as a Latin poet ; for, though his pieces 
be few, they comprise what are not unjustly lauded, as the best imitations extant 
of Catullus. By him there is an elegiac address to his father, on the republication 
of the Logical Institution, in 1627. It is found also in the third, but not in the 
fourth, edition of that work ; and it establishes, once and again, that the logician, 
then alive, was a native of Scotland, and not merely born of a Scottish grandfather 
in England : 

"Ecce Caledoniis Duncanus natus in oris;" 
and addressing the book, 

" Scotia cumprimis pernice adeunda volatu, 
Namque patrem tellus edidit ilia tuum." 

Joseph Scaliger also testifies to the nativity of his friend Duncan, in Scotland, and 
apparently in the west of Scotland. Speaking of the Gaelic, he says : "qua in Scotia 

occidentalibus (unde Duncanus et Buchananus sunt oriundi) utuntur." (Prima 

Scaligerana, voce Britones). Scaliger, I may notice, had resided for some time in 
Scotland. Dr. Kippis (Biogr. Brit. V. 494.) states, on very respectable authority, that 
William and Mark were born in London, their father, Alexander, in Beverley. He is, 
however, wrong.] 

3 [The Disputationes Philosophies Gulielmi Camerarii Scoti, Congregationis Ora- 
lorii Domini Jesu Preshyteri (in folio, Paris, 1630, pp. 620), is a work of much learning, 
and of considerable acuteness. The first part is logical ; but among other treatises 



124 LOGIC. 

the study is indicated by the fact, that while its statutory teach- 
ing has been actually defunct for ages, the "Elements of 
Logic" of William Duncan of Aberdeen, have long collegially 
dispensed a muddy scantling of metaphysic psychology, and dia- 
lectic, in the University where Downam taught; 1 while Murray's 
Compendium Logiccc, the Trinity College text-book, may show 
that matters are, if possible, at a lower pass in Dublin. 

In Oxford, the fate of the science has been somewhat different, 
but, till lately, scarcely more favorable. And here it is neces- 
sary to be more particular, as this is the only British seminary 
where the study of logic proper can be said to have survived ; and 
as, with one exception, the works under review all emanate from 
that University — represent its character — and are determined 
and modified by its circumstances. Indeed, with one or two in- 
significant exclusions, these works comprise the whole recent 
logical literature of the kingdom. 

During the scholastic ages, Oxford was held inferior to no 
University throughout Europe ; and it was celebrated, more espe- 
cially, for its philosophers and dialecticians. But it was neither 
the recollection of old academical renown, nor any enlightened 
persuasion of its importance, that preserved to logic a place among 
the subjects of academical tuition, when the kindred branches of 
philosophy, with other statutory studies, were dropt from the 
course of instruction actually given. These were abandoned from 
no conviction of their inutility, nor even in favor of others of 
superior value : they were abandoned when the system under 
which they could be taught, was, for a private interest, illegally 
superseded by another under which they could not. When the 
College Fellows supplanted the University Professors, the course 
of statutory instruction necessarily fell with the statutory instru- 
ments by which it had been carried through. The same exten- 

of this author, I have not seen his Introductio ad Logicam (in octavo, Anjou, and of 
the same year). It is a curious illustration of the " Scott extra Scotiam agentcs :" that 
there were five Camerarii, five Chalmerses; all flourishing in 1630 ; all Scotsmen by 
birth ; all living on the Continent ; and there, all Latin authors ; viz., two Williams, 
two Davids, and one George. The preceding age shows several others.] 

1 [I understand that William Duncan's Elements, and every other logical spectre, 
are now in Cambridge, even collegially, laid, and that mathematics are there at length 
left to supply the discipline which logic was of old supposed exclusively to afford. 
If, however, the " Philosophical Society of Cambridge " may represent the University, 
its Transactions are enough to show the wisdom of the old and statutory in contrast 
to the new and illegal, and that Coleridge (himself a Cantabrigian, and more than 
nominally a philosopher), was right in declaring " Mathematics to be no substitute for 
Logic.'' — (See Athenscum, 24th August 1850, and Appendix II.)] 



FORTUNE OF LOGICAL STUDY IN OXFORD. 125 

sive, the same intensive, education which had once been possible 
when the work was distributed among a body of Professors, each 
chosen for his ability, and each concentrating his attention on a 
single study, could no longer be attempted, when the collegial 
corporations, a fortuitous assemblage of individuals, in so far as 
literary qualification is concerned, had usurped the exclusive pri- 
vilege of instruction ; and when each of these individuals was 
authorized to become sole teacher of the whole academical cyclo- 
paedia. But while the one unqualified Fellow-tutor could not 
perform the work of a large body of qualified Professors ; it is 
evident that, as he could not rise and expand himself to the former 
system, that the present, existing only for his behoof, must be 
contracted and brought down to him. This was accordingly done. 
The mode of teaching, and the subjects taught, were reduced to 
the required level and extent. The capacity of lecturing, that 
is, of delivering an original course of instruction, was not now to 
be expected in the tutor. The pupil, therefore, read to his tutor 
a lesson out of book ; on this lesson, the tutor might, at his dis- 
cretion, interpose an observation, or preserve silence ; and he was 
thus effectually guaranteed from all demands, beyond his ability 
or inclination to meet. This reversed process was still denomi- 
nated a lecture. In like manner, all subjects which required in 
the tutor more than the Fellows' average of learning or acute- 
ness, were eschewed. Many of the most important branches of 
education in the legal system were thus discarded; and those 
which it was found necessary or convenient to retain in the in- 
trusive, were studied in easier and more superficial treatises. 
This, in particular, was the case with logic. 

By statute, the Professor of Dialectic was bound to read and 
expound the Organon of Aristotle twice a week ; and, by statute, 
regular attendance on his lectures was required from all under- 
graduates for their three last years. Until the statutory system 
was superseded, an energetic and improving exercise of mind 
from the intelligent study of the most remarkable monument of 
philosophical genius, imposed on all, was more especially secured 
in those who would engage in the subsidiary business of tuition. 
This, and the other conditions of that system, thus determined a 
far higher standard of qualification in the tutor, when the tutor 
was still only a subordinate instructor, than remained when he 
had become the exclusive organ of academical education. When, 
at last, the voice of the Professors was silenced in the University, 



126 LOGIC. 

and in the Colleges the Fellows had been able to exclude all othei 
graduates from the now principal office of Tutor, the study of 
logic declined with the ability of those by whom the science was 
taught. The original treatises of Aristotle were now found to 
transcend the College complement of erudition and intellect. 
They were accordingly abandoned ; and with these the various 
logical works previously in academical use, which supposed any 
reach of thought, or an original acquaintance with the Organon. 
The Compendium of Sanderson stood its ground for a season, 
when the more elaborate treatises (erst in academical use) of 
Brerewood, Crackanthorpe, and Smiglecius, were forgotten. But 
this little treatise, the excellent work of an accomplished logician, 
was too closely relative to the books of the Organon, and 
demanded too frequently an inconvenient explanation, to retain 
its place, so soon as another text-book could be introduced, more 
accommodated to the fallen and falling standard of tutorial com- 
petency. Such a text-book was soon found in the Compendium 
of Aldrich. The dignity of its author, as Dean of Christ Church, 
and his reputation as an ingenious, even a learned, writer in 
other branches of knowledge, insured it a favorable recommen- 
dation: it was yet shorter than Sanderson's; written in a less 
scholastic Latin ; adopted an order wholly independent of the 
Organon ; and made no awkward demands upon the tutor, as 
comprising only what was either plain in itself, or could without 
difficulty be expounded. The book — which, in justice to the 
Dean, we ought to mention was not originally written for the 
public — is undoubtedly a work of no inconsiderable talent; but 
the talent is, perhaps, principally shown, in the author having 
performed so cleverly a task for which he was so indifferently 
prepared. Absolutely considered, it has little or no value. It is 
but a slight eclectic epitome of one or two logical treatises in 
common use (that it is exclusively abridged from Wallis is incor- 
rect) ; and when the compiler wanders from, or mistakes, his 
authorities, he displays a want of information to be expected, 
perhaps, in our generation, but altogether marvelous in his. It 
is clear, that he knew nothing of the ancient, and very little of the 
modern, logicians. The treatise likewise omits a large proportion 
of the most important matters ; and those it does not exclude are 
treated with a truly unedifying brevity. As a slender introduc- 
tion to the after-study of logic (were there not a hundred better) 
it is not to be despised; as a full course of instruction — as an 



FORTUNE OP LOGICAL STUDY IN OXFORD. 127 

independent system of the science, it is utterly contemptible 
Yet, strange to say, the Compend of Aldrich, having gradually 
supplanted the Compend of Sanderson, has furnished, for above 
a century, the little all of logic doled out in these latter days by 
the University of Bradwardin and Scotus. 1 

Even the meliorations of the academical system have not proved 
beneficial to this study : perhaps, indeed, the reverse. Since the 
institution of honors — since the re-introduction, however limit- 
ed, of a real examination for the first degree in arts, a powerful 
stimulus has been applied to other studies — 'to that of logic none. 
Did a candidate make himself master of the Organon ? — he would 
find as little favor from the dispensers of academical distinction, 
as he had previously obtained assistance from his tutor. For the 
public examiners could not be expected, either to put questions 
on what they did not understand, or to encourage the repetition 
of such overt manifestations of their own ignorance. The mini- 
mum of Aldrich, therefore, remained the maximum of the 
"schools;" and was "got up," not to obtain honor, but to avoid 
disgrace. — Yet even this minimum was to be made less ; there 
was "a lower deep beneath the lowest deep." The Compen- 
dium, a meagre duodecimo of a hundred and eighty pages, to be 
read in a day, and easily mastered in a week, was found too 
ponderous a volume for pupil, and tutor, and examiner. It was 
accordingly subjected to a process of extenuation, out of which 
it emerged, reduced to little more than a third of its original gra- 
cility — a skeleton without marrow or substance. " Those who 
go deep in dialectic," says Aristo Chius, "may be resembled to 
crab-eaters ; for a mouthful of meat, they spend their time over 
a heap of shells." But your superficial student of logic, he loses 
his time without even a savor of this mouthful ; and Oxford, in 
her senility, has proved no Alma Mater, in thus so unpiteously 
cramming her alumni with the shells alone. As Dr. "Whately 
observes:— "A very small proportion even of distinguished stu- 

1 Some thirty years ago, indeed, there was printed, in usum academics, juventutis, 
certain Excerpta ex Aristotelis Organo. The execution of that work shows how in- 
adequate its author was to the task he had undertaken. Nothing could be more con- 
ducive to the rational study of logic than a systematic condensation of the more essen- 
tial parts of the different treatises of the Organon, with original illustrations, and 
selections from the best commentators, ancient and modern. As it is, this petty pub- 
lication has exerted no influence on the logical studies of the University ; we should 
like to know how many tutors have expounded it in their lectures, how many candi- 
dates have been examined on it in the schools. On the logical authors, at least, of the 
Univeir-ity,' it has exerted none. 



128 LOGIC. 

dents ever become proficients in logic ; and by far the greater 
proportion pass through the University without knowing any 
thing at all of the subject. I do not mean that they have not 
learned by rote a string of technical terms, but that they under- 
stand absolutely nothing whatever of the principles of the science." 
The miracle would be, if they ever did. Logic thus degraded to 
an irksome, but wholly unprofitable, penance, the absurdity of 
its longer enforcement was felt by some intelligent leaders of the 
University. "It was proposed," says Dr. "VVhately, "to leave 
the study of logic altogether to the option of the candidates ;" a 
proposal hailed with joy by the under-graduates, who had long 
prayed fervently with St. Ambrose — "A Dialectica Aristotelis 
libera nos, Domine" 1 

In these circumstances, when even the Heads could not much 
longer have continued obstinate, and Logic seemed in Oxford on 
the eve of following the sister sciences of philosophy to an aca- 
demic grave, a new life was suddenly communicated to the expir- 
ing study, and hope, at least, allowed for its ultimate convales- 
cence under a reformed system. 

This was mainly effected by the publication of the Elements 
of Dr. Whately, then Principal of St. Alban's Hall, and recently 
(we rejoice) elevated to the Archiepiscopal See of Dublin. (No. 2, 
of the works at the head of this article.) Somewhat previously, 
the Rudiment a (abbreviated Compendium) of Aldrich bad been 
illustrated with English notes by an anonymous author, whom 
we find quoted in some of the subsequent treatises under the 
name of Hill. (No. 1.) The success and ability of the Elements 
prompted imitation and determined controversy. Mr. Bentham 
(nephew of Mr. Jeremy Bentham) published his Outline and Ex- 
amination, in which Dr. Whately is alternately the object of cen- 
sure and encomium. (No. 4.) The pamphlet of Mr. Lewis (on 
two points only) is likewise controversial. (No. 5.) The Princi- 
pal, as becoming, was abridged and lauded by his Vice (No. 3 ;) 
and the treatises of Mr. Huyshe and others (Nos. 6, 7, 8, 9), are 
all more or less relative to Dr. "Whately's, and all so many mani- 
festations of the awakened spirit of logical pursuit. The last 
decade, indeed, has done more in Oxford for the cause of this sci- 
ence than the whole hundred and thirty years preceding ; 2 for 

1 [This addition of St. Ambrose to the Litany, I took as recorded by Cardinal Cusa.] 

2 [Since that time, with a rise of the academical spirit, the study of logic has been 
still more zealously pursued in Oxford, and several resident members of the Univer- 



WORKS REVIEWED. 129 

since the time of Wallis and Aldrich, until the works under re- 
view, we recollect nothing on the subject which the University 
could claim, except one or two ephemeral tracts; — the shallow 
Reflections of Edward Bentham, about the middle of the last 
century ; and after the commencement of the present, a couple 
of clever pamphlets in vindication of logic, and in extinction of 
the logic of Kett — which last also was a moon-calf of Alma Mater. 
It remains now to inquire : — At what value are we to rate 
these new logical publications ? — Before looking at their con- 
tents, and on a knowledge only of the general circumstances 
under which they were produced, we had formed a presumptive 
estimate of what they were likely to perform ; and found our 
anticipation fully confirmed, since we recently examined what 
they had actually accomplished. None of the works are the pro- 
ductions of inferior ability ; and though, some of them propose 
only a humble end, they are all respectably executed. A few of 
them display talent rising far above mediocrity : and one is the 
effort of an intellect of great natural power. But when we look 

sity have published treatises on the science, of no ordinary merit. I may chronologi- 
cally notice those of Mr. Wooley, Mr. Thomson, Mr. Chretien, and Mr. Mansel. — To 
two of those gentleman I am, indeed, under personal obligations. — Mr. Thomson, in 
the second edition of his Laws of Thought, among other flattering testimonies of his 
favorable opinion, has done me the honor of publishing the specimen which I had com- 
municated to him, of a scheme of Syllogistic Notation ; and I regret .o find, that this 
circumstance has been the occasion of some injustice, both to him and to me. To him : 
— inasmuch, as he has been unfairly regarded as a mere expositor of my system ; to 
tne : — inasmuch, as his objections to that system have been unfairly regarded as de- 
cisive. In point of fact, though we coincide, touching the thoroughgoing quantifica- 
tion of the predicate in affirmative propositions, we are diametrically opposed, touch- 
ing the same quantification in negatives. But, while I am happy, in the one case, to 
receive even a partial confirmation of the doctrine, from Mr. Thomson's able and in- 
dependent speculation ; I should be sorry, in the other, to subject, what I deem, the 
truth to the uncanvassed opinion of any human intellect. — To Mr. Mansel, besides sundry 
gratifying expressions of approval, in his acute and learned Notes on the Rudiments of 
Aldrich ; I am indebted for valuable aid in the determination of a curious point in the 
history of logic. Instead of Petrus Hisyanus being a plagiarist, and his Summulce. a 
translation from the Greek, as supposed by Ehinger, Keckermann, Placcius, J. A. 
Fabricius, Brucker — by all, in short, who for the last two centuries and a half, have 
treated of the matter ; it is now certain, that the " Synopsis Organi," published under 
the name of Michael Psellus (the younger) is itself a mere garbled version of the great 
logical text-book of the west, and without any authority, capriciously fathered, by 
Ehinger, as an original work, on the illustrious Byzantine. I am now, in fact, able to 
prove : that in the Augsburg Library, the codex from which Ehinger printed, contained 
neither the title nor the author's name under which his publication appeared ; and 
that in several of the European libraries there are extant Greek manuscripts, iden- 
tical with the text of that publication, and professing to be merely copies of a transla- 
tion from the Latin original of Hispanus. — This detection enables us also to trace 
therpa^ara/Eypa^e, k. r. A. of Blemmides and the Greeks to the Barbara, Celar- 
ent, &c. of Hispanus and the Latins.] 

I 



130 LOGIC. 

from the capacity of the author to his acquirements, our judg- 
ment is less favorable. If the writers are sometimes original, 
their matter is never new. They none of them possess — not to 
say a superfluous erudition on their subject — even the necessary 
complement of information. Not one seems to have studied the 
logical treatises of Aristotle ; all are ignorant of the Greek Com- 
mentators on the Organifn, of the Scholastic, Ramist, Cartesian, 
Wolfian, and Kantian Dialectic. In none is there any attempt 
at the higher logical philosophy : we have no preliminary determ- 
ination of the fundamental laws of thought ; no consequent 
evolution, from these laws, of the system itself. On the con- 
trary, we find principle buried in detail ; inadequate views of the 
science ; a mere agglutination of its parts ; of these some wholly 
neglected, and others, neither the most interesting nor important, 
elaborated out of bounds ; and always, though in very different 
proportions, too much of the " shell," too little of the " meat." 
They are rarely, indeed, wise above Aldrich. His partial views 
of the order and comprehension of the science have determined 
theirs ; his most egregious blunders are repeated; and sometimes 
when an attempt is made at a correction, either Aldrich is right, 
or a new error is substituted for the old. Even Dr. Whately, 
who, in the teeth of every logician from Alexander to Kant, speaks 
of " the boundless field within the legitimate limits of the sci- 
ence," "walks in trodden ways," and is guiltless of "removing 
the ancient landmark." His work, indeed never transcends, and 
generally does not rise to the actual level of the science ; nor, 
with all its ability, can it justly pretend to more than a relative 
and local importance. Its most original and valuable portion is 
but the insufficient correction of mistakes touching the nature of 
logic, long exploded, if ever harbored, among the countrymen of 
Leibnitz, and only lingering among the disciples of Locke. 

An articulate proof of the accuracy of these conclusions, on all 
the works under consideration, would far exceed our limits. Nor 
is this requisite. It will be sufficient to review that work, in 
chief, to which most of the others are correlative, and which 
stands among them all the highest in point of originality and 
learning; and the rest occasionally, in subordination to that one. 
Nor in criticizing Dr. Whately's elements can we attempt to vin- 
dicate all or even the principal points of our judgment. To show 
the deficiencies in that work, either of principle or of detail, would, 
in the universal ignorance in this country of logical philosophy 



WORKS REVIEWED. 131 

and of a high logical standard, require a preliminary exposition 
of what a system of this science ought to comprehend, far beyond 
our space, were we even to discuss these points to the exclusion 
of every other. We must, therefore, omitting imperfections, con- 
fine ourselves to an indication of some of Dr. Whatley's positive 
errors. This we shall attempt, "though the work," as its author 
assures us, "has undergone, not only the close examination of 
himself and several friends, but the severer scrutiny of determ- 
ined opponents, without any material errors having been detected, 
or any considerable alteration found necessary." In doing this, 
nothing could be farther from our intention than any derogation 
from the merit of that eminent individual, whom, even when we 
differ most from his opinions, we respect, both as a very shrewd, 
and (what is a rarer phenomenon in Oxford) a very independent, 
thinker. The interest of truth is above all personal considera- 
tions ; and as Dr. Whately, in vindication of his own practice, 
has well observed : — " Errors are the more carefully to be pointed 
out in proportion to the authority by which they are sanctioned." 
" No mercy," says Lessing, " to a distinguished author." This, 
however, is not our motto ; and if our " scrutiny" be " severe," 
we are conscious than it can not justly be attributed to "determ- 
ined opposition." 

We find matter of controversy even in the first page of the 
Elements, and in regard even to the first question of the doctrine; 
■ — What is logic? — Dr. Whately very properly opens by a state- 
ment, if not a definition, of the nature and domain of logic ; and 
in no other part of his work have the originality and correctness 
of his views been more applauded, than in the determination of 
this fundamental problem. He says : 

"Logic, in the most extensive sense which the name can with propriety 
be made to hear, may he considered as the Science, and also as the Art 
of Reasoning. It investigates the principles on which argumentation' is 
conducted, and furnishes rules to secure the mind from error in its deduc- 
tions. Its most appropriate office, however, is that of instituting an anal- 
ysis of the process of the mind in reasoning ; and in this point of view it 
is, as has been stated, strictly a science ; while, considered in reference to 
the practical rules above mentioned, it may be called the art of reasoning. 
This distinction, as will hereafter appear, has been overlooked, or not 
clearly pointed out by most writers on the subject ; logic having been in 
general regarded as merely an art, and its claim to hold a place among 
the sciences having been expressly denied." {Elements, p. 1.) 

Here the inquiry naturally separates into two branches ; — the 
one concerns the genus, the other the object-matter, of logic. 



132 LOGIC. 

In regard to the former : — Dr. Whately's reduction of logic to 
the twofold category of Art and Science, has earned the praises 
of his Critical Examiner, but Mr. Bentham, it must be acknowl- 
edged, is as often out in his encomium as in his censure. He 
observes : 

"Dr. Whatcly has in particular brought to view one very important 
fact, overlooked by all his predecessors, though so obvious, when once ex- 
hibited, as to make us wonder that it should not have been remarked : viz. 
that logic is a science as well as an art. The universally prevailing error, 
that human knowledge is divided into a number of parts, some of which 
are arts without science, and others sciences without art, has been fully ex- 
posed by Mr. [Jeremy] Bentham in his Chrcstomthaia. There also it has 
been shown, that there can not exist a single art that has not its corres- 
ponding science, nor a single science which is not accompanied by some 
portion of art. The Schoolmen, on the contrary, have, with extraordinary 
effort, endeavored to prove that logic is an art only, not a science : and in 
that particular instance, Dr. Whately is, I believe, one of the first who has 
ventured to contradict this ill-founded assertion." — [Outline, p. 12.) 

In all this there is but one statement with which we can agree. 
"We should certainly "wonder" with Mr. Bentham, had any "so 
obvious and important fact" been overlooked by all Dr. Whately's 
predecessors ; and knowing something of both, should assuredly 
be less disposed to presume a want of acuteness in the old logi- 
cians, than any ignorance of their speculations in the new. In 
the latter alternative, indeed, will be found a solution of the 
" wonder." Author and critic are equally in error. 

In the first place, looking merely to the nomenclature, both 
are historically wrong. " Logic," says Dr. Whately, " has been 
in general regarded merely as an art, and its claim to hold a 
place among the sciences has been expressly denied." The re- 
verse is true. The great majority of logicians have regarded logic 
as a science, and expressly denied it to be an art. This is the 
oldest as well as the most general opinion. — " The Schoolmen," 
says Mr. Bentham, " have with extraordinary effort endeavored 
to prove that logic is an art only" On the contrary, the School- 
men have not only " with extraordinary effort,'' but with unex- 
ampled unanimity labored in proving logic to be exclusively a 
science ; and so far from " Dr. Whately being" (with Mr. Jeremy 
Bentham) " the first to contradict this ill-founded assertion," the 
paradox of these gentlemen is only the truism of the world beside. 
This error is the more surprising, as the genus of logic is one of 
those vexed questions on which, as Ausonius has it, 

" Omnis certat dialectica turba sophorum;" 



LOGIC— WHAT ? 133 

indeed, until latterly, no other perhaps stands so obtrusively for- 
ward during the whole progress of the study. — Plato and the 
Platonists considered dialectic as a science ; but with them dia- 
lectic was a real not a formal discipline, and corresponded rather 
to the metaphysic than to the logic of the Peripatetics. — Logic is 
not denned by Aristotle. — His Grreek followers (and a consider- 
able body of the most eminent dialecticians since the revival of 
letters), deny it to be either science or art. — The Stoics in general 
viewed it as a science. — The Arabian and Latin Schoolmen did 
the same. In this opinion Thomist and Scotist, Realist and 
Nominalist, concurred ; an opinion adopted, almost to a man, by 
the Jesuit, Dominican, and Franciscan Cnrsualists. — From the 
restoration of letters, however, and especially during the latter 
part of the sixteenth century, so many Aristotelians, with the 
whole body of Ramists (to whom were afterward to be added a 
majority of the Cartesians, and a large proportion of the Eclec- 
tics), maintained that it was an art ; that the error of Sander- 
son may be perhaps excused in attributing this opinion to "al- 
most all the more recent authors" at his time. Along with these, 
however (so far is Dr. Whately from having " brought to view 
this important fact, overlooked by all his predecessors,") there was 
a very considerable party who anticipated the supposed novelty 
of this author in defining logic by the double genus of art and 
science. 1 — -In the schools of Wolf and Kant, logic again obtained 
the name of science. 

But — to look beneath the name — as Dr. Whately and his critic 
are wrong in imagining that there is any novelty in the observa- 
tion, they are equally mistaken in attributing to it the smallest 
importance. The question never concerned logic itself, but merely 
the meaning of the terms by which it should be defined. The 
old logicians (however keenly they disputed whether logic were 

1 To make reference to these would be de trop ; we count above a dozen logicians 
of this class in our own collection. But independently of the older and less familiar 
authors, Mr. Jeremy Bentham and Dr. Whately have no claim (the latter makes none) 
to originality in this observation. Even the last respectable writer on logic in the 
British Empire, previous to these gentlemen, Dr. Richard Kirwan, whose popular and 
able volumes were published in 1807, defines logic as art and science; and this in 
terms so similar to those of Dr. Whately, that we can not hesitate in believing that 
this author had his predecessor's definition (which we shall quote) immediately in 
view. " Logic is both a science and an art ; it is a science inasmuch as, by analyzing 
the elements, principles, and structure of arguments, it teaches us how to discover 
their truth or detect their fallacies, and point out the sources of such errors. It is an 
art, inasmuch as it teaches now to arrange arguments in such manner that their truth 
may be most readily perceived, or their falsehood detected." (Vol. i. p. 1.) 



134 LOGIC. 

a science or an art — or neither — or both — a science speculative, 
or a science practical — or at once speculative and practical) — 
never dreamt that the controversy possessed, in so far as logic 
was concerned, more than a verbal interest. 1 In regard to the 
essential nature of logic they were at one ; and contested only, 
what was the comprehension of these terms in philosophical pro- 
priety, or rather what was the true interpretation of their Aris- 
totelic definitions. Many intelligent thinkers denounced, with 
Vives, the whole problem as frivolous. "Quaestioni locum declit 
misera homonymia," says Mark Duncan, among a hundred others. 
The most strenuous advocates of the several opinions regularly 
admit, that unless the terms are taken in the peculiar significa- 
tion for which they themselves contend, that all and each of their 
adversaries may be correct ; while, at the same time it was rec- 
ognized on all hands, that these terms were vulgarly employed 
in a vague or general acceptation, under which every opinion 
might be considered right, or rather no opinion could be deemed 
wrong. The preparatory step of the discussion was, therefore, an 
elimination of these less precise and appropriate significations, 
which, as they could at best only afford a remote genus and dif- 
ference, were wholly incompetent for the purpose of a definition. 
But what the older logicians rejected as a useless truism, the re- 
cent embrace as a new and important observation. — In regard to 
its novelty: — Do Dr. Whately and Mr. Bentham imagine that 
any previous logician could ever have dreamt of denying that 
logic, in their acceptation of the terms, was at once an art and a 
science? Let them look into almost any of the older treatises, 
and they will find this explicitly admitted, even when the terms 
Art and Science are employed in senses far less vague and uni- 
versal than is done by them. — As to its importance : — Do they 
suppose that a more precise and accurate conception of logic is 
thus obtained ? The contrary is true. The term Science Dr. 
Whately employs in its widest possible extension, for any knowl- 
edge considered absolutely, and not in relation to practice ; and 
in this acceptation every art in its doctrinal portion must be a 



1 Father Bufficr is unjust to the old logicians, but he places the matter on its proper 
footing in reference to the new. — " Si la logique est une science. Oui et non ; selon 

I'idee qu'il vous plait d'attacher au nom de science, &c. Si la logique est un art. 

Encore un fois, oui et non ; II plait aux logiciens de disputer si la logique est, ou 

n'est pas un art ; et il ne leur plait pas toujours d'avouer ni d'enseigner a leurs dis- 
ciples, que e'est une pure ou puerile question de nom." (Cours des Sciences (Logi- 
oue), p. 887.) 



LOGIC— WHAT ? 135 

science. Art he defines the application of knowledge to practice ; 
in which signification, ethics, politics, religion, and all other 
practical sciences, must he arts. Art and Science are thus dis- 
tended till they run together. As philosophical terms, they are 
now altogether worthless ; too universal to define ; too vacillating 
between identity and difference, to distinguish. In fact, their 
application to logic, or any other subject, is hereafter only to un- 
define, and to confuse ; expressing, as they do, not any essential 
opposition between the things themselves, but only the different 
points of view under which the same thing may be contemplated 
by us ; — every art being thus in itself also a science, every science 
in itself also an art. — This Mr. Bentham thinks the correction 
of a universal error — the discovery of an important fact. If the 
question in the hands of the old logicians be frivolous, what is it 
in those of the new ! 1 

So much for the genus, now for the object-matter. 

Of Dr. "Whately's Elements, Mr. Hind says, and that emphati- 
cally : — " This treatise displays — and it is the only one that has 
clearly done so — the true nature and use of logic ; so that it 
may be approached, no longer as a dark, curious, and merely 

1 Such is the most favorable interpretation we can give of Dr. Whately's meaning. 
But the language in which this meaning is conveyed is most ambiguous and inaccu- 
rate. E. g. he says : u A science is conversant about knowledge only.'''' (P. 56.) He 
can not mean what the words express, that science has knowledge for its object-mat- 
ter, for this is nonsense ; and the words do not express, what, from the context, we 
must presume he means, that science has no end ulterior to the contemplative act of 
knowledge itself. Dr. Whately thus means by science what Aristotle meant by spec- 
ulative science, but how different in the precision of their definitions ! Geoop^riKTJy 
[lev (fVrtoTTjpjy) re\o? aXrjdeia- TrpaKTiKTJ? 8' epyov ; — or, as Averroes has it, Per 
speculativam scimus ut sciamus ; per practicam scimus ut operemur. — In like manner, 
Dr. Whately gives, without being aware of it, two very different definitions of the term 
Art. In one place (p. 1) it is said, " that logic may be called the art of reasoning, 
while, considered in reference to the practical rules, it furnishes to secure the mind 
from error in its deductions." This is evidently the AiakenTiKr] ^copi? irpaypdruiv of 
the Greek interpreters, the logica docens (qu<z tradit praccpta) of the Arabian and 
Latin schools. Again, in another (p. 56) it is said, that " an art is the application of 
knowledge to practice." If words have any meaning, this definition (not to wander 
from logic) suits only the AiaXeicriKr] iv xpwei Kal yvp.vacrLq npaypdruiv of the Greek, 
the logica utens {qua. utitur praceptis) of the Latin Aristotelians. The L. docc?is, and 
the L. utens, are, however, so far from being convertible, that by the great majority 
of philosophers, they have been placed in different genera. The Greek logicians denied 
the L docens to be either science or art, regarding it as an instrument, not a part of 
philosophy ; the L. utens, on the contrary, they admitted to be a science, and a part 
of philosophy, but not separable and distinct. The Latins, on the contrary, held in gen- 
eral the L. docens to be a science, and part of philosophy ; the L. utens as neither, 
but only an instrument. Some, however, made the docens a science, the utens an art; 
while by others this opinion was reversed, &c. These distinctions are not to be con- 
fbunde \ with the pure and applied logics of a more modern philosophy. 



136 LOGIC. 

speculative study ; such as one is apt, in fancy, to class with 
astrology and alchemy." (Pref. p. viii.) These are strong 
words. 

We are disposed to admit that Dr. Whately, though not right, 
is perhaps not far wrong with regard to the "true nature and 
use of logic ;" — that he " clearly displays" that nature and use, 
is palpably incorrect; and that his is "the only treatise which 
has clearly done so," is hut another proof, that assertion is often 
in the inverse ratio of knowledge. 

We shall not dwell on what we conceive a very partial concep- 
tion of the science — that Dr. Whately makes the process of 
reasoning not merely its principal, hut even its adequate object; 
those of simple apprehension and judgment being considered not 
in themselves as constituent elements of thought, but simply as 
subordinate to argumentation. In this view logic is made con- 
vertible with syllogistic. This view, which may be allowed, in 
so far as it applies to the logic contained in the Aristotelic treatises 
now extant, was held by several of the Arabian and Latin school- 
men ; borrowed from them by the Oxford Crackanthorpe, it was 
adopted by Wallis ; and from Wallis it passed to Dr. Whately. 
But, as applied to logic, in its own nature, this opinion has been 
long rejected, on grounds superfluously conclusive, by the im- 
mense majority even of the Peripatetic dialecticians ; and not a 
single reason has been alleged by Dr. Whately to induce us to 
waver in our belief, that the laws of thought, and not the laws of 
reasoning, constitute the adequate object of the science. This 
error, which we can not now refute, would, however, be of com- 
paratively little consequence, did it not — as is notoriously the 
case in Dr. Whately's Elements — induce a perfunctory considera- 
tion of the laws of those faculties of thought ; these being viewed 
as only subsidiary to the process of reasoning. 

In regard to the " clearness" with which Dr. Whately "dis- 
plays the true nature and use of logic," we can only say, that, 
after all our consideration, we do not yet clearly apprehend 
what his notions on this point actually are. In the very pas- 
sages where he formally defines the science, we find him in- 
distinct, ambiguous, and even contradictory ; and it is only by 
applying the most favorable interpretation to his words that we 
are able to allow him credit for any thing like a correct opinion. 

He says, that "the most appropriate office of logic (as science) 
is that of instituting an analysis of the process of the mind in 



LOGIC— WHAT? 137 

reasoning,'''' (p. 1) ; ana again, that " the process {operation) of 
reasoning is alone the appropriate province of logic." (Pp. 13, 
140.) — The process or operation of reasoning is thus the object- 
matter about which the science of logic is conversant. Now, a 
definition which merely affirms that logic is the science which has 
the process of reasoning for its object, is not a definition of this 
science at all ; it does not contain the differential quality by which 
logic is discriminated from other sciences ; and it does not prevent 
the most erroneous opinions (it even suggests them) from being 
taken up in regard to its nature. Other sciences, as psychology 
and metaphysic, propose for their object (among the other facul- 
ties) the operation of reasoning, but this considered in its real 
nature : logic, on the contrary, has the same for its object, but 
only in its formal capacity ; in fact, it has, in propriety of speech, 
nothing to do with the process or operation, but is conversant only 
with its laws. Dr. Whately's definition, is therefore, not only 
incompetent, but delusive. It would confound logic and psycho- 
logy and metaphysic, and occasion those very misconceptions in 
regard to the nature of logic which other passages of the Elements, 
indeed the general analogy of his work, show that it was not his 
intention to sanction. 

But Dr. Whately is not only ambiguous ; he is contradictory. 
We have seen, that, in some places, he makes the process of rea- 
soning the adequate object of logic ; what shall we think when 
we find, that, in others, he states that the total or adequate object 
of logic is language ? But, as there can not be two adequate 
objects, and as language and the operation of reasoning are not 
the same, there is therefore a contradiction. "In introducing," 
he says, " the mention of language, previously to the definition 
of logic, I have departed from established practice, in order that 
it may be clearly understood, that logic is entirely conversant 
about language ; a truth, which most writers on the subject, if 
indeed they were fully aware of it themselves, have certainly not 
taken due care to impress on their readers." 1 (P. 56.) And 
again : — " Logic is wholly concerned in the use of language." 
(P. 74.) 

The term logic (as also dialectic) is of ambiguous deriva- 
tion. It may either be derived from A6yo<? (evSlaOeros), reason, 

1 Almost all logicians, however, impress upon their readers, that logic is (not, 
indeed, entirely, but) partially and secondarily occupied with language as the vehicle 
of thought, about which last it is adequately and primarily conversant. 



138 LOGIC. 

or our 'intellectual faculties in general ; or from Aoyos jjrpo- 
fyopiicos;), speech or language, by which these are expressed. The 
science of logic may, in like manner, be viewed either : — 1°, as 
adequately and essentially conversant about the former (the in- 
ternal X0709, verbum mentale), and partially and accidentally 
about the latter, (the external X0709, verbum oris) ; or, 2°, as ade- 
quately and essentially conversant about the latter, partially and 
accidentally about the former. 

The first opinion has been held by the great majority of logi- 
cians, ancient and modern. The second, of which some traces 
may be found in the G-reek commentators of Aristotle, and in the 
more ancient Nominalists during the middle ages (for the later 
scholastic Nominalists, to whom this doctrine is generally, but 
falsely, attributed, held in reality the former opinion), was only 
fully developed in modern times by philosophers, of whom Hobbes 
may be regarded as the principal. In making the analysis of the 
operation of reasoning the appropriate office of logic, Dr. Whately 
adopts the first of these opinions ; in making logic entirely con- 
versant about language, he adopts the second. We can hardly, 
however, believe that he seriously entertained this last. It is 
expressly contradicted by Aristotle (Analyt. Post. i. 10, h 7) ; it 
involves a psychological hypothesis in regard to the absolute 
dependence of the mental faculties on language, once and again 
refuted, which we are confident that Dr. Whately never could 
sanction ; and, finally, it is at variance with sundry passages of 
the Elements, where a doctrine apparently very different is 
advanced. But, be his doctrine what it may, precision and 
perspicuity are not the qualities we should think of applying 
to it. 

But if the Vice-principal be an incompetent judge of what the 
Principal has achieved, he is a still more incompetent reporter 
of what all other logicians have not. If he had read even a hun- 
dredth part of the works it behoved him to have studied, before 
being entitled to assert that Dr. Whately's " treatise is the only 
one that has clearly displayed the true use and nature of logic," 
he has accomplished what not one of his brother dialecticians of 
Oxford has attempted. But the assertion betrays itself : 7rdvTo\/.io$ 
d/jLadeia. To any one on a level with the literature of this science, 
the statement must appear supremely ridiculous — that the no- 
tions held of the nature and use of logic in the Kantian, not to 
say the Wolfian school, are less clear, adequate, and correct, than 



LOGIC— WHAT? 139 

those promulgated by Dr. Whatley. — A general survey, indeed, 
of the history of opinions on this subject would prove, that views 
essentially sound were always as frequent, as the carrying of 
these views into effect was rare. Many, speculatively, recognized 
principles of the science, which almost none practically applied to 
regulate its constitution. — Even the Scholastic logicians display, 
in general, more enlightened and profound conceptions of the 
nature of their science than any recent logician of this country. 
In their multifarious controversies on this matter, the diversity of 
their opinions on subordinate points is not more remarkable, than 
their unanimity on principal. All their doctrines admit of a 
favorable interpretation ; some, indeed, for truth and precision, 
have seldom been equaled, and never surpassed. Logic they all 
discriminated from psychology, metaphysic, &c. as a rational, not 
a real — as a formal, not a material science.— The few who held 
the adequate object of logic to be things in general, held this, 
however, under the qualification, that things in general were con- 
sidered by logic only as they stood under the general forms of 
thought imposed on them by the intellect — quatenus secundis in- 
tentionibus substabant. — Those who maintained this object to be 
the higher processes of thought (three, two, or one), carefully 
explained, that the intellectual operations were not, in their own 
nature, proposed to the logician — that belonged to the psycholo- 
gist — but only in so far as they were dirigible, or the subject of 
laws. The proximate end of logic was thus to analyze the canons 
of thought ; its remote, to apply these to the intellectual acts. — 
Those, again (and they formed the great majority), who saw 
this object in second notions, 1 did not allow that logic was con- 

1 The distinction (which we owe to the Arabians) of first and second notions, 
(notiones, conccptus, intentioncs, intellecta prima et secunda), is necessary to be known, 
not only on its own account, as a highly philosophical determination, but as the con- 
dition of any understanding of the scholastic philosophy, old and new, of which, 
especially the logic, it is almost the Alpha and Omega. Yet, strange to say, the 
knowledge of this famous distinction has been long lost in " the (once) second school 
of the church." — Aldrich's definition is altogether inadequate, if not positively errone- 
ous. Mr. Hill and Dr. Whately, followed by Mr. Huyshe and the author of Questions 
on Logic, &c, misconceive Aldrich, who is their only authority, if Aldrich understood 
himself, and flounder on from one error to another, without even a glimpse of the 
light. (Hill, pp. 30-33 ; Whately, pp. 173-175 ; Huyshe, pp. 18, 19 ; Questions, pp. 
10, 11, 71.) (Of a surety, no calumny could be more unfounded, as now applied to 
Oxford, than the " clamor," of which Dr. Whately is apprehensive — " the clamor against 
confining the human mind in the trammels of the schoolmen !") — The matter is worth 
some little illustration ; we can spare it none, and must content ourselves with a defi- 
nition of the terms. — A first notion is the concept of a thing as it exists of itself, and 
independent of any operation of thought ; as, John, Man, Animal, &c. A second 



140 LOGIC. 

cemetl with these second notions abstractly and in themselves, 
(that was the province of metaphysic), hut only in concrete as 
applied to first ; that is, only as they were the instruments and 
regulators of thought. — It would require a longer exposition than 
we can afford, to do justice to these opinions — especially to the 
last. "When properly understood, they will be found to contain, 
in principle, all that has been subsequently advanced of any value 
in regard to the object-matter and scope of logic. 

Nothing can be more meagre and incorrect than Dr. Whately's 
sketch of the History of Logic. The part of his work, indeed, 
is almost wholly borrowed from the poverty of Aldrich. As 
specimens : 

Archytas, 1 by Whately as by Aldrich, is set down as inventor 
of the Categories ; and this now exploded opinion is advanced 
without a suspicion of its truth. The same unacquaintance with 
philosophical literature and Aristotelic criticism is manifested by 
every recent Oxford writer who has alluded to the subject. We 
may refer to the Excerpta ex Organo, in usiim Academicce Ju- 
ventulis — to the Oxonia Purgata of Dr. Tatham — to Mr. Hill's 
Notes on Aldrich — to Mr. Huyshe's Logic — and to the Philoso- 
phy of Aristotle by Mr. Hampden. The last, even makes the 
Stagirite derive his moral system from the Pythagoreans ; al- 
though the forgery of the fragments preserved by Stobaeus, under 
the name of Theages, and other ethical writers of that school, 
has now been for half a century fully established. They stand 
likewise without an obelus in Dr. (xaisford's respectable edition 
of the Florilegium. [The physical treatises, also, as those under 

notion is the concept, not of an object as it is in reality, but of the mode under which it 
is thought by the mind ; as, Individual, Species, Genus, &c. The former is the concept 
of a thing — real — immediate — direct: the latter the concept of a concept — formal — me- 
diate — reflex. For elucidation of this distinction, and its applications, it is needless to 
make references. The subject is copiously treated by several authors in distinct 
treatises, but will be found competently explained in almost all the older systems of 
logic and philosophy. 

1 [On Archytas, I may refer the reader to three excellent monographs : by Navarrus 
(Copenhagen, 1820) ; by Hartenstein (Leipsic. 1833) ; and by Gruppe (Berlin, 1840.) 
The Metaphysical, Physical, and Ethical fragments, written in the Doric dialect, and 
bearing the name of Pythagorean philosophers, are all, to a critical reader, obtrusively 
spurious, and on all, this note has been superfluously branded by the German critics 
and historians of philosophy, for above half a century. Meincrs began, and nearly ac- 
complished, the exposition. Instead of Plato and Aristotle stealing their philosophies 
from the Pythagoreans, and their thefts remaining, by a miracle, for centuries, un- 
known, and even unsuspected ; the forgers of these more modern treatises have only 
impudently translated the doctrines of the two philosophers into their supposititious 
Doric. Their non-exposure, at the time, is the strongest proof of the languid litera- 
ture of the decline.] 



LOGIC— WHAT ? 141 

the names of Ocellus Lucanus and Timaeus Locrius, are of the 
same character ; they are comparatively recent fabrications.] — 
Aristotle would be, indeed, the sorriest plagiary on record, were 
the thefts believed of him by his Oxford votaries not false only, 
but ridiculous. By Aldrich it is stated, as on indisputable evi- 
dence, that, while in Asia, he received a great part of his philos- 
ophy from a learned Jew ; : and this silly and long derided fable 
even stands uncontradicted in the Compendium to the present 
day : while, by the Oxford writers at large, he is still supposed 
to have stolen his Categories and Ethics (to say nothing of his 
physical doctrines) from the Pythagoreans. "What would Schlei- 
ermacher or Creuzer think of this ! 

In discriminating Aristotle's merits in regard to logic, Dr. 
Whately, we are sorry to say, is vague and incorrect. 

"No science can be expected to make any considerable progress, which 
is not cultivated on right principles. The greatest mistakes have al- 
ways prevailed respecting the nature of logic ; and its province has, in 
consequence, been extended by many writers to subjects with which it has 
no proper connection. Indeed with the exception of Aristotle (who is 
himself not entirely exempt from the errors in question), hardly a writer 
on logic can be mentioned who has clearly perceived, and steadily kept in 
view throughout, its real nature and object." (P. 2.) 

On the contrary, so far is Aristotle- — so far at least are his 
logical treatises which still remain (and these are, perhaps, few 
to the many that are lost), from meriting this comparative eulo- 
gium, than nine-tenths — in fact, more than nineteen-twentieths, 
— of these treat of matters, which, if logical at all, can be viewed 
as the objects, not of pure, but only of an applied logic ; and we 
have no hesitation in affirming, that the incorrect notions which 
have prevailed, and still continue to prevail, in regard to the 
" nature and province of logic," are, without detraction from his 
merits, mainly to be attributed to the example and authority of 
the Philosopher himself. — The book of Categories, as containing 
an objective classification of real things, is metaphysical, not log- 
ical. The two books of Posterior Analytics, as sorely conversant 
about demonstrative or necessary matter, transcend the limits of 
the formal science ; and the same is true of the eight books of 
Topics, as wholly occupied with probable matter, its accidents 
and applications. Even the two books of the Prior Analytics, in 

1 [The Jews have even made Aristotle a native Israelite — born at Jerusalem — of 
the tribe of Benjamin — and a Rabbi deep in the sacred books of his nation. (See 
Bartoloccii Bibliolhcca Rabbinica, t. i. p. 471, sq.)] 



142 LOGIC. 

which the pure syllogism is considered, are swelled with extra- 
logical discussions. Such, for example, is the whole doctrine of 
the modality of syllogisms as founded on the distinction of pure, 
necessary, and contingent matter ; — the consideration of the real 
truth or falsehood of propositions, and the power so irrelevantly 
attributed to the syllogism of inferring' a true conclusion from, 
false premises; — the distinction of the enthpmeme, through the 
extraformal character of its premises, as a reasoning from signs 
and probabilities ; — the physiognomic syllogism, &c. &c. The 
same is true of the book On Enouncement ; and matters are even 
worse with that on Fallacies, which is, in truth, only a sequel 
of the Topics. If Aristotle, therefore, did more than any other 
philosopher for the progress of the science; he also did more than 
any other to overlay it with extraneous lumber, and to impede 
its development under a precise and elegant form. Many of his 
successors had the correctest views of the object and scope of 
logic ; and even among the schoolmen there were minds who 
could have purified the science from its adventitious sediment, 
had they not been prevented from applying their principles to 
details, by the implicit deference then exacted to the precept and 
practice of Aristotle. 1 

"It has been remarked," says Dr. Whately, after Aldrich, 
" that the logical system is one of those few theories which have 
been begun and perfected by the same individual. The history 
of its discovery, as far as the main principles of the science are 
concerned, properly commences and ends with Aristotle." (P. 6.) 
— In so far as " the main principles of the science are concerned," 
this can not be denied. It ought, however, to have been stated 
with greater qualification. Aristotle left to his successors, much 
to reject — a good deal to supply — and the whole to simplify, 
digest, and arrange. — In regard alone to the deficiencies : — If Dr. 
Whately and the other Oxford logicians are right (we think de- 
cidedly otherwise), in adding the fourth syllogistic figure (which, 
by the way, none of them, from Aldrich downward, ever hint to 
the under-graduates not to be of Aristotelic origin), the Stagirite 

1 [M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, to whom, among many other valuable Aristotelic 
labors of high talent, wc owe an excellent French translation of the Organon, with 
copious notes and introductions, has combated this opinion. (See the Preface to his 
first volume, especially pp. xvi-xx, cxlii.) I still, however, remain unconvinced ; 
though I can not now detail my reasons. — Assuredly, I do not plead guilty to the 
charge of disparaging the genius of Aristotle ; reverencing him as the Prince of 
Philosophers.] 



HISTORY OP LOGIC. 143 

is wrong in recognizing the exclusive possibility of the other three 
{Analyt. Pr. i. 23, § 1) ; and so far his system can hardly he 
affirmed by them to have been perfected by himself. To say no- 
thing of the Jive moods subsequently added by Theophrastus and 
Eudemus, the extensive and important doctrine of hypotheticals, 
a doctrine, in a great measure, peculiar and independent, was, 
probably, an original supplement by these philosophers ; previous 
to which, the logical system remained altogether defective. [This 
requires some addition, and some modification.] 

The following is Dr. Whately's sketch of the fortune of Logic, 
from Aristotle down to the Schoolmen : 

"The writings of Aristotle were not only absolutely lost to the world for 
about two centuries [many, if not most, were always extant], but seem 
to have been but little studied for a long time after their recovery. An 
art, however, of logic, derived from the principles traditionally preserved 
by his disciples, seems to have been generally known, and to have been 
employed by Cicero in his philosophical works ; but the pursuit of the 
science seems to have been abandoned for a long time. Early in the 
Christian era the Peripatetic doctrines experienced a considerable revival; 
and we meet with the names of Galen and Porphyry as logicians ; but it 
is not till the fifth [sixth] century that Aristotle's logical works were trans- 
lated into Latin by the celebrated Boethius. Not one of these seems to 
have made any considerable advances in developing the theory of reason- 
ing. Of Galen's labors little is known ; and Porphyry's principal work is 
merely on the Predicables. We have little of the science till the revival 
of learning among the Arabians, by whom Aristotle's treatises on this as 
well as on other subjects were eagerly studied." (P. 7.) 

In this sketch, Dr. Whately closely follows Aldrich ; and how 
utterly incompetent was Aldrich for a guide, is significantly shown 
by his incomparable (but still uncorrected) blunder of confound- 
ing Galen with Alexander of Aphrodisias ! l ' Circa annum Christi 
140, interpretum princeps Gralenus floruit, 'Etjrjyrjr?]?, sive Ex- 
positor, /car efjoxfjv, dictus." Galen, who thus flourished at nine 
years old, never deserved, never received the title of The Com- 
mentator. This designation, as every tyro ought to know, was 
exclusively given to Alexander, the oldest and ablest of the Greek 
interpreters of Aristotle, until it was afterward divided with him 
by Averroes. — The names of Theophrastus and Eude?nus, the 
great founders of logic after Aristotle, do not appear. — We say 
nothing of inferior logicians, but the Aphrodisian and Ammonius 
Hermice were certainly not less worthy of notice than Porphyry. 
— Of Galen's logical labors, some are preserved, and of others we 
know not a little from his own information and that of others. 
Why is it not stated, here or elsewhere, that the fourth figure 



144 LOGIC. 

has been attributed to Galen, and on what (incompetent) author- 
ity ? — Nothing is said of the original logical treatises of Boethius, 
though his work on Hypothetical is the most copious we possess. 
— Had Dr. Whately studied the subject for himself, he would 
hardly have failed to do greater justice to the Greek logicians. 
What does he mean by saying, "we have little of the science till 
the revival of learning among the Arabians ?" Are Averroes and 
Aviconna so greatly superior to Alexander and Ammonius ? 
Dr. Whately, speaking of the Schoolmen, says : 

" It may be sufficient to observe, that their fault did not lie in their dili- 
gent study of logic, and the high value they set upon it, but in their ut- 
terly mistaking the true nature and object of the science ; and by the at- 
tempt to employ it for the purpose of physical discoveries involving every 
subject in a mist of words, to the exclusion of sound philosophical investi- 
gation. Their errors may serve to account for the strong terms in which 
Bacon sometimes appears to censure logical pursuits ; but that this cen- 
sure was intended to bear against the extravagant perversions, not the 
legitimate cultivation of the science, may be proved from his own obser- 
vations on the subject, in his Advancement of Learning." (P. 8.) 

It has been long the fashion to attribute every absurdity to the 
Schoolmen ; it is only when a man of talent, like Dr. Whately, 
follows the example, that a contradiction is worth while. The 
Schoolmen (we except always such eccentric individuals as Ray- 
mond Lully), had correcter notions of the domain of logic than 
those who now contemn them, without a knowledge of their 
works. They certainly did not " attempt to employ it for the 
purpose of physical discoveries." We pledge ourselves to refute 
the accusation, whenever any effort is made to prove it ; till 
then, we must be allowed to treat it as a groundless, though a 
common calumny. — As to Bacon, we recollect no such reproach 
directed by him either against logic or against the scholastic logi- 
cians. On the contrary, "Logic," he says, "does not pretend to 
invent sciences, or the axioms of sciences, but passes it over with 
a cuique in sua arte credendum" ' And so say the Schoolmen ; 
and so says Aristotle. 

We are not satisfied with Dr. Whately's strictures on Locke, 



1 Advancement of Learning : — and similar statements, frequently occur in the De 
Argumcntis and Novum Organum. The censure of Bacon, most pertinent to the point, 
is in the Organum, Aph. 63. It is, however, directed, not against the Schoolmen, but 
exclusively against Aristotle ; it does not reprobate any false theory of the nature and 
object of logic, but certain practical misapplications of it ; and, at any rate, it only 
shows that Bacon gave the name of Dialectic to Ontology. Aristotle did not corrupt 
physics by logic, but by mctaphysic. The Schoolmen have sins of their own to an- 
swer for, but this, imputed to them, they did not commit. 



MODALITY, OF PROPOSITIONS AND SYLLOGISMS. 145 

Watts, £rc., but can not afford the space necessary to explain our 
views. One mistake in relation to the former we shall correct, 
as it can be done in a few words. After speaking of Locke's ani- 
madversion on the syllogism, Dr. Whately says : " He (Locke) 
presently after inserts an encomium upon Aristotle, in which he 
is equally unfortunate ; he praises him for the ' invention of syl- 
logisms,' to which he certainly had no more claim than Linnaeus 
to the creation of plants and animals, or Harvey," &c. (P. 19.) 
In the first place, Locke's words are, " invention of forms of argu- 
mentation" which is by no means convertible with " invention 
of syllogisms" the phra'se attributed to him. But if syllogism 
had been the word, in one sense it is right, in another wrong. 
"Aristotle," says Dr. Gillies, "invented the syllogism," &c. ; and 
in that author's (not in Dr. Whately 's) meaning, this may be cor- 
rectly affirmed. — But, in the second place, Dr. Whately is wrong 
in thinking, that the word " invention" is used by Locke, in the 
restricted sense in which it is now almost exclusively employed, 
as opposed to discovery. In Locke and his contemporaries, to say 
nothing of the older writers, to invent is currently used for to dis- 
cover. An example occurs in the sentence of Bacon just quoted ; 
and in this signification we may presume that " invention" is 
here employed by Locke, as it was also thus employed in French 
by Leibnitz, in relation to this very passage of Locke. 

But from the History, to proceed to the Science itself. 

Turning over a few pages, we come to an error not peculiar to 
Dr. Whately, but shared with him by all logicians — we mean the 
Modality of propositions and syllogisms ; in other words, the 
necessity, possibility, &c, of their matter, as an object of logical 
consideration. 

It has always been our wonder, how the integrity of logic has 
not long ago been purified from this metaphysical admixture. 
Kant, whose views of the nature and province of the science were 
peculiarly correct, and from whose acuteness, after that of Aris- 
totle, every thing might have been expected, so far from ejecting 
the Modality of propositions and syllogisms, again sanctioned its 
right of occupancy, by deducing from it, as an essential element 
of logical science, the last of his four generic categories, or fun- 
damental forms of thought. Nothing, however, can be clearer, 
than that this modality is no object of logical concernment. Logic 
is a formal science ; it takes no consideration of real existence, 
or of its relations, but is occupied solely about that existence and 

K 



146 LOGIC. 

those relations which arise through, and are regulated by, the 
conditions of thought itself. Of the truth or falsehood of propo- 
sitions, in themselves, it knows nothing, and takes no account: 
all in logic may be held true that is not conceived as contradic- 
tory. In reasoning, logic guarantees neither the premises nor the 
conclusion, but merely the consequence of the latter from the 
former ; for a syllogism is nothing more than the explicit asser- 
tion of the truth of one proposition, on the hypothesis of other pro- 
positions being true in which that one is implicitly contained. A 
conclusion may thus be true in reality (as an assertion), and yet 
logically false (as an inference). 1 

But if truth or falsehood, as a material quality of propositions 
and syllogisms be extralogical, so also is their modality. Neces- 
sity, Possibility, &c, are circumstances which do not affect the 
logical copula or the logical inference. They do not relate to the 
connection of the subject and predicate of the antecedent and con- 
sequent as terms in thought, but as realities in existence ; they 
are metaphysical, not logical conditions. The syllogistic inference 
is always necessary ; is modified by no extraformal condition ; 
and is equally apodictic in contingent as in necessary matter. 

If such introduction of m'etaphysical notions into logic be once 
admitted, there is no limit to the intrusion. This is indeed shown 
in the vacillation of Aristotle himself in regard to the number of 
the modes. In one passage (De Interp. c. 12, § 1) he enumerates 
four — the necessary, the impossible, the contingent, the possible ; 
a determination generally received among logicians. In another 
{Ibid, h 9), he adds to these four modes two others, viz. the true, 
and, consequently, the, false. Some logicians have accordingly 
admitted, but exclusively, these six modes ; his Grreek interpreters, 
however, very properly observe (though they made no use of the 
observation), that Aristotle did not mean by these enumerations 

1 [In a certain sense, therefore, all logical inference is hypothetical — hypothetically 
necessary ; and the hypothetical necessity of logic stands opposed to absolute or sim- 
ple necessity. The more recent scholastic philosophers have well denominated these 
two species — the nccessitas coiiscquentice and the nccessitas conscqucjitis. The former 
is an ideal or formal necessity ; the inevitable dependence of one thought upon another, 
by reason of our intelligent nature. The latter is a real or material necessity ; the in- 
evitable dependence of one thing upon another because of its own nature. The former 
is a logical necessity, common to all legitimate consequence, whatever be the material 
modality of its objects. The latter is an extralogical necessity, over and above the 
syllogistic inference, and wholly dependent on the modality of the matter consequent. 
— This ancient distinction, modern philosophers have not only overlooked but con- 
founded. (See contrasted the doctrines of the Aphrodisian and of Mr. Dugald Stew- 
art, in Dissertations on Reid, p. 701 a, note *).] 



MODALITY OF PROPOSITIONS AND SYLLOGISMS. 147 

to limit the number of modes to four or six, but thought only of 
signalizing the more important. [In general, indeed, as I previ- 
ously stated, he speaks only of the necessary and contingent, 
(Anal, passim.)] Modes may be conceived without end ; — as the 
certain, the probable, the useful, the good, the just — and what 
not? All, however, must be admitted into logic if any are : the 
line of distinction attempted to be drawn is futile. Such was the 
confusion and intricacy occasioned by the four or two modes alone, 
that the doctrine of modals long formed, not only the most useless, 
but the most difficult and disgusting branch of logic. It was, at 
once, the criterium et crux ingeniorum. " De modali non gus- 
tabit asinus," said the schoolmen; "De modali non gustabit 
logicus," say we. This subject was only perplexed because dif- 
ferent sciences were confounded in it ; and modals ought to be 
entirely, on principle (as they have been almost entirely in prac- 
tice), relegated from the domain of logic, and consigned to the 
grammarian and metaphysician. This was, indeed, long ago, 
obscurely perceived by a profound but now forgotten thinker. 
"Pronunciata ilia," says Vives, " quibus additur modus, non 
dialecticam sed grammaticam qussstionem habent." Ramus also 
felt the propriety of their exclusion, though equally unable to 
explicate its reasons. 1 

Dr. Whately has very correctly stated — 

" It belongs exclusively to a syllogism, properly so called (i. e. a valid 
argument, so stated that its conclusiveness is evident from the mere form of 
the expression), that if letters, or any other unmeaning symbols, be sub- 
stituted for the several terms, the validity of the argument shall still be 
evident." (P. 37.) 

Here logic appears in Dr. Whately's exposition, as it is in 

1 [M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire (Logique d'Aristote, T. I. Pref. p. Ixv.) says :— ' 
" Theophraste et Eudeme, dont on invoque l'autorite, avaient combattu sur plusieurs 
points la theorie de la modalite ; ils en avaient change quelques regies ; mais ila 
1'avaient admise corome partie integrante de la theorie generale. Depuis eux, nul 
logicien n'a pretenrfu la supprimer. M. Hamilton est jusqu'a present le seul, si l'on ■ 
excepte Laurentius VaHa, au xv e siecle, qui ait propose ce retranchement." — Valla, 
whose Dialectica I take shame for overlooking, certainly does reject modals, as a spe- 
cies of logical proposition ; but on erroneous grounds. He confounds formal with 
material necessity ; and alleges no valid reason for the retrenchment. The reduction 
of the Necessary and Contingent to the Apodictic and Problematic is modern, and, I 
think, erroneous. For all the necessary is not apodictic or demonstrable ; and the con- 
tingent is by no means convertible with the doubtful or problematic. There is here 
alsd a mixing of the subjective with the objective. In my view, modes are only ma- 
terial affections of the predicate, or, it may be, of the subject ; and those which, from 
(heir generality, have been contemplated in logic, may, I think, be reduced to the re- 
lation of genus and species, and their consecution, thereby, recalled to the utmosl 
simplicity. — I agree with Mr. Mansel (Pref. p. ii.), if I do not misapprehend him.] 



148 LOGIC. 

truth, a distinct and self-sufficient science. What, then, are we 
to think of the following passages ? 

" Should there he no sign at all to the common term, the quantity of 
the proposition (which is called an Indefinite proposition), is ascertained 
by the matter ; i. e. the nature of the connection between the extremes, 
which is either Necessary, Impossible, or Contingent, &c, &c. (P. G4.) — 
"As it is evident, that the truth or falsity of any proposition (its quantity 
and quality being known) must depend on the matter of it, we must bear 
in mind, that, in necessary matter all affirmatives are true, and nega- 
tives false; in impossible matter, vice versa; in contingent matter, all 
Wiiversals false, and particidars true: e.g. 'all islands (or, some islands) 
are surrounded by water,' must be true, because the matter is necessary: 
to say 'no islands, ov some — not,' &c, would have been false: again, 
'-some islands are fertile,' 'some are not fertile,' are both true, because it 
is Contingent Matter : put 'all,' or 'no,' instead of ' some,' and the propo- 
sitions will be false," &c, &c. (P. 67.) 

In these passages (which, it is almost needless to say, are only 
specimens of the common doctrine), logic is reduced from an inde- 
pendent science to a scientific accident. Possible, impossible, ne- 
cessary, and contingent matter, are terms expressive of certain lofty 
generalizations from an extensive observation of real existence ; 
and logic, inasmuch as it postulates a knowledge of these general- 
izations, postulates its own degradation to a precarious appendage 
— to a fortuitous sequel, of all the sciences from which that knowl- 
edge must be borrowed. If in syllogisms, "unless unmeaning 
symbols can be substituted for the several terms, the argument 
is either unsound or sophistical ;" — why does not the same hold 
good in propositions, of which syllogisms are but the complement? 
But A, and B, and C, know nothing of the necessary, impossible, 
contingent. Is logic a formal science in one chapter, a real 
science in another ? Is it independent, as a constituted whole ; 
and yet dependent, in its constituent parts ? 

We can not pass without notice Dr. Whately's employment of 
the term Argument. This word he defines, and professes to use 
in a " strict logical sense ;" and gives us, moreover, under a dis- 
tinct head, a formal enumeration of its other various significations 
in ordinary discourse. The true logical acceptation of the term, 
he, however, not only does not employ, but even absolutely over- 
looks; while, otherwise, his list of meanings is neither well dis- 
criminated, nor at all complete. We shall speak only of the 
logical omission and mistake. 

" Reasoning (or discourse) expressed in words is argument; and an ar- 
gument stated at full length, and in its regular form, is called a syllo- 



ARGUMENT— MIDDLE TERM. 149 

gism ; the third part of logic, therefore, treats of the syllogism. Every 
argument consists of two parts ; that which is proved; and that by means 
of which it is proved," &c. And in a note on this : — " I mean, in the 
strict technical sense ; for, in popular use, the word Argument is often, 
employed to denote the latter of these two parts alone : e. g. this is an 
argument to prove so and so," &c. (P. 72.) 

Now, the signification, here (not quite correctly) given as the 
"popular use" of the term, is nearer to the "strict technical 
sense" than that which Dr. Whately supposes to be such. In. 
technical propriety argument can not be used for argumentation, 
as he thinks — but exclusively for its middle term. In this mean- 
ing the word (though not with uniform consistency) was employed 
by Cicero, Q,uintilian, Boethius, &c. ; it was thus subsequently 
used by the Latin Aristotelians, from whom it passed even to the 
Ramists ;' and this is the meaning which the expression always, 
first and most naturally, suggests to a logician. Of the older dia- 
lecticians, Crackanthorpe is the only one we recollect, who uses, 
and professes to use, the word not in its strict logical signification, 
but with the vulgar as convertible with Reasoning. In vindicat- 
ing his innovation, he, however, misrepresents his authorities:. 
Sanderson is, if we remember, rigidly correct. The example of 
Crackanthorpe, and of some French Cartesians, may have seduced 1 
Wallis ; and Wallis's authority, with his own ignorance of logi- 
cal propriety, determined the usage of Aldrich — and of Oxford. — 
We say again Aldrich's ignorance ; and the point in question 
supplies a significant example. " Terminus tertius [says he] cui 
quaestionis extrema comparantur, Aristoteli Argumentum, vulgo 
Medium? The reverse would be correct : — " Aristoteli Medium, 
vulgo Argumentum." This elementary blunder of the Dean, 
corrected by none, is repeated by nearly all his epitomators> 
expositors, and imitators. It stands in Hill (p. 118) — in Huyshq 
(p. 84) — in the Questions on Logic (p. 41) — and in the Key to 
the Questions (p. 101) ; and proves emphatically, that, for a cen- 
tury and a half, at least, the Organon (to say nothing of otheic 
logical works) could have been as little read in Oxford as the 
Targum or Zendavesta. 

A parallel to this error is Dr. Whately's statement, that " the 



1 Ramus, in his definitions, indeed, abusively extends the word to both the other, 
terms ; the middle he calls the te.rtium argumentum. Throughout his writings, how- 
ever — and the same is true of those of his friend Talaeus — argumentum, without an 
adjective, is uniformly the word used for the middle term of a syllogism ; and in this 
he is followed by the Ramists and Semi-Ramists in general. 



150 LOGIC. 

Major Premiss is often called Principle.'''' (P. 25.) The major 
premise is often called the Proposition ; never the Principle. A 
principle may, indeed, be a major premise; but we make bold 
to say, that no logician ever employed the term Principle as a 
synonyme for major premise. 

Speaking of the Dilemma, Dr. Whately says : — " Most, if not 
all, writers on this point, either omit to tell, whether the Dilemma 
is a kind of conditional or of disjunctive argument, or else refer 
it to the latter class, on account of its having one disjunctive pre- 
miss ; though it clearly belongs to the class of conditionals." (P. 
100.) Most, if not all, logical writers, do not omit to tell this, 
but Dr. Whately, we fear, has omitted to consult them ; and the 
opinion he himself adopts, so far from being held by few or none, 
has been, in fact, long the catholic doctrine. For every one logi- 
cian, during the last century, who does not hold the dilemma to 
be a conditional syllogism, we could produce ten who do. 

Dr. "Whately — indeed all the Oxford logicians — adopts the 
inelegant division of the Hypothetical proposition and syllogism 
into the Conditional and Disjunctive. This is wrong in itself. 
The name of the genus should not, without necessity, be con- 
founded with that of a species. But the terms Hypothetical 
and Conditional are in sense identical, differing only in the lan- 
guage from which they are taken. It is likewise wrong on the 
score of authority ; for the words have been used as synonymous 
by those logicians who, independently of the natural identity 
of the terms, were best entitled to regulate their conventional 
use. — Boethius, the first among the Latins who elaborated this 
part of logic, employs indifferently the terms hypotheticus, co-ndi- 
tionalis, non simplex, for the genus, and as opposed to categori- 
cus or simplex ; and this genus he divides into the Propositio et 
Syllogismus conjunctivi (called also conjuncti, connexi, per con- 
nexionem), equivalent to Dr. Whately's Conditionals; and into 
the Propositio et Syllogismus disjunclivi (also disjuncti, per dis- 
junctionem). Other logicians have employed other, none better, 
terms of distinction ; but, in general, all who had freed themselves 
of the scholastic slime, avoided the needless confusion to which 
we object. 

But, to speak now of Hypotheticals in their Aristotelic mean- 
ing, Dr. Whately says : 

" Aldrich has stated, through a mistake, that Aristotle utterly despised 
hypothetical syllogisms, and thence made no mention of them ; but he did 



HYPOTHETICAL PROPOSITIONS AND SYLLOGISMS. 151 

indicate his intention to treat of them in some part of this work, which 
either was not completed hy him according to his design, or else (in com- 
mon with many of his writings) has not come down to us." (P. 104.) 

Any ignorance of Aristotle on the part of Aldrich is conceiva- 
ble, but in his censure Dr. Whately is not himself correct. "With 
the other Oxford logicians, he never suspects the HvXkoytcrfiol ef 
vTrodio-ecos of Aristotle and our hypothetical syllogisms, not to be 
the same. In this error, which is natural enough, he is not 
without associates even of distinguished name. Those versed in 
Aristotelic and logical literature are, however, aware, that this 
opinion has been long, if not exploded, at least rendered ex- 
tremely improbable. We can not at present enter on the subject, 
and must content ourselves with stating, that hypothetical syllo- 
gisms, in the present acceptation, were first expounded, and the 
name first applied to them by Theophrastus and Eudemus. 
The latter, indeed, clearly discriminated such hypothetical syllo- 
gisms from those of Aristotle ; and, what has not, we believe, 
been observed, even Boethius expressly declares the HvXkoyt,(rfj,b<s 
ef 6/jLo\oyia<; of the philosopher to be really categorical, while in 
regard to the ^vWoyicr/xb^ ek to ahvvarov, there is no ground of 
doubt. The only reason for hesitation arises from the passage 
(Analyt. Pr. i. 44, § 4), in which it is said, that there are many 
other syllogisms concluding by hypothesis, and these the philoso- 
pher promises to discuss. Of what nature these were, we have 
now no means even of conjecture. If we judge from Aristotle's 
notion of hypothesis, and from the syllogisms he calls by that 
name, we should infer that they had no analogy to the hypothe- 
ticals of Theophrastus ;' and it will immediately be seen, that a 
complete revolution in the nomenclature of this branch of logic 
was effected subsequently to Aristotle. We may add, that no 
reliance is to be placed in the account' given by Pacius of the 
Aristotelic doctrine on this point : he is at variance with his own 
authorities, and has not attentively studied the Greek logicians. 



1 [M. Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire (Logique D'Aristote, T. I. Pref. p. Ix. sq. and T. 
IV. Top. i. 8, 9, notes) has done me the honor to controvert this opinion, and contends 
that the Hypothetical syllogisms of Aristotle, are the same with those which from 
Theophrastus have descended to us under that name. But however ingenious his 
arguments, to me they are not convincing ; and to say nothing of older authorities, 
he has also against him Dr. Waitz, the recent and very able editor of the Organon in 
Germany. — I am now, indeed, more even than formerly, persuaded, that our hypothe- 
tical are not the reasonings from hypothesis of the father of logic ; for I think it can 
be shown, that our hypothetical and disjunctive syllogisms are only immediate infer- 
ences, and not therefore entitled, in Aristotelic language, to the style of syllogisms at all.] 



152 LOGIC. 

So far we state only the conclusions also of others. The fol- 
lowing observation, as farther illustrating this point, will proba- 
bly surprise those best qualified to judge, by its novelty and 
paradox. It must appear, indeed, at first sight, ridiculous to 
talk, at the present day, of discoveries in the Organon. The 
certainty of the fact is, however, equal to its improbability. The 
term Categorical (fcaTTjyopi/cbs), applied to proposition or syllo- 
gism, in contrast to Hypothetical (v7ro0eTi/cb<;), we find employed 
in all the writings extant of the Peripatetic School, subsequent 
to those of its founder. In this acceptation it is universally ap- 
plied by the interpreters of Aristotle, up to the Aphrodisian ; and 
previously to him, we certainly know that it was so used by 
Theophrastus and Eudemus. Now, no logician, we believe, an- 
cient or modern, has ever remarked, that it was not understood 
in this signification by the philosopher himself. 1 The Greek com- 
mentators on the Organon, indeed, once and again observe, in par- 
ticular places, that the term categorical is there to be interpreted 
affirmative ; but none has made the general observation, that it 
was never applied by Aristotle in the sense in which it was exclu- 
sively usurped by themselves. But so it is. Throughout the Orga- 
non there is not to be found a single passage, in which categori- 
cal stands opposed to hypothetical (e'£ v7ro6eaem) ; there is not a 
single passage in which it is not manifestly in the meaning of 
affirmative, as convertible with /cara^an/cbs, and opposed to amo- 
fyariicbs and arepriTiKos. Nor is the induction scanty. In the 
Prior Analytics alone, the word occurs at least eighty-five times. 
— Nay, farther ; as this never was, so there is another term al- 
ways employed by Aristotle in contrast to his syllogisms by hypo- 
thesis. The syllogisms of this class (whether they conclude by 
agreement, or through a reductio ad absurdum), he uniformly 



1 [M. Peisse, in his extensive logical reading, has found the following unexclusive, 
though merely incidental, observation by the thrice learned Gerard John Vossius : — 
" Nusquam in Aristotele syllogismus categoricus opponitur hypothetico." (De Natura. 
Artium, L. iv. c. 8, § 8.) — I have also met with an earlier authority, in Cardanus; 
but he states only that Aristotle very frequently uses categoric for affirmative, not that 
he always docs so. {Contr. Log. Ixxiv.) With these individual and partial excep- 
tions, the general statement in the text stands good. 

Bocthius, I think, has greatly contributed to this confusion of the terms. In hia 
versions from the Organon, he uniformly translates Aristotle's KarrfyopiKos (affirma- 
tive), by ■pra&icatibus ; and Aristotle's KaracpaTiKo? (a mere synonome), affiirmativus : 
whereas, in his original writings, lie uses the term prasdicativus for KarrjyopiKos, in the 
post-Aristotclic signification. — Apuleius, on the contrary (followed by Cassiodorus and 
Isidore of Seville), always employs dedicativus in opposition to abdicativus; and prce- 
iicativus in opposition to conditionalis. And rightly. (De Dogm. Plat. 1. iii.)] 



HYPOTHETICAL PROPOSITIONS AND SYLLOGISMS. 153 

opposes to those which conclude SeL/crt/cm, ostensively ; and the 
number of passages in which this opposition occurs are not a few. 
— Categorical, in our signification, is thus not of Aristotelic 
origin. The change in the meaning of the term was undoubtedly, 
we think, introduced by Theophrastus. The marvel is, that no 
logician or commentator has hitherto signalized the contrast be- 
tween the Aristotelic signification of the word, and that which 
has subsequently prevailed. 1 

We may allude (we can do no more) to another instance, in 
which Aristotle's meaning has been almost universally mistaken; 
and to the authority of this mistake we owe the introduction of 
an illogical absurdity into all the systems of logic. "We refer to 
the Enthymeme. — On the vulgar doctrine this is a species of rea- 
soning, distinguished from the syllogism proper, by having one 
or other of its premises, not expressed, but understood ; and this 
distinction, without a suspicion either of its legitimacy or origin, 
is fathered on the Stagirite. — The division of syllogism and 
enthymeme, in this sense, would involve nothing less than a dis- 
crimination of species between the reasoning of logic and the 
reasoning of ordinary discourse ; syllogism being the form pecu- 
liar to the one, enthymeme that appropriate to the other. — Nay, 
even this distinction, if admitted, would not avail ; syllogism and 
enthymeme being distinguished as two intralogieal forms of argu- 
mentation. Those who defend the distinction are thus driven 
back on the even greater absurdity — of establishing an essential 
difference of form, on an accidental variety of expression — of 
maintaining that logic regards the accident of the external lan- 
guage, and not the necessity of the internal thought. This, at. 
least, is not the opinion of Aristotle, who declares : — "Syllogism 
and Demonstration belong not to the outivard discourse, but to 
the discourse ivhich passes in the mind : — Ov 77-/309 rbv ego) \6yov 
17 a/rrbheiPLS, aXka irpb<; rbv ev rjj ^rv^y' errel ovSe crvWoytcrfios." 
(Analyt. Post. i. 10, h 7.) — But if the distinction, in its general 
nature, be unphilosophical, it is still more irrational at the hands 
of its reputed author. For Aristotle distinguishes the enthymeme 
from the mere syllogism, as a reasoning of a peculiar matter — 
from signs and likelihoods ; so that, if he over-and-above discrim- 
inated these by an accident of form, he would divide the genus* 
by two differences, and differences of a merely contingent asso- 
ciation. Yet, strange to say, this improbability has been be- 

1 [See note ( l ) to p. 152.] 



154 LOGIC. 

lieved ; — believed without any cogent evidence; — believed from 
the most ancient times ; and even when the opinion was at last 
competently refuted, the refutation was itself so immediately for- 
gotten, that there seems not to be at present a logical author (not 
to say in England, but) in Europe, who is even aware of the ex- 
istence of the controversy. 1 

A discussion of the question would exceed our limits. For 
those who may wish to study the point, we may briefly indicate 
the sources of information; and these, though few, will be found, 
we think, to be exhaustive. 

Toward the conclusion of the fifteenth century, the celebrated 
Rodolphus Agricola (t 1485), in his posthumous book, De In- 
ventione Dialectica, recognizes it as doubtful, whether Aristotle 
meant to discriminate the Enthymeme from the Syllogism, by 
any peculiarity of form ; and Phrissemius in his Scholia on that 
book (1523), shows articulately, that the common opinion was at 
variance with the statements of the Philosopher. Without, it is 
probable, any knowledge of Phrissemius, the matter was discuss- 
ed by Majoragius, in his Reprehensiones contra Nizolium, and 
his Explanationes in Aristotelis Rhetoricam — the latter in 1572. 
Twenty-five years thereafter, Julius Partus (who was not appa- 
rently aware of either) argued the whole question on far broader 
grounds ; and, in particular, on the authority of four Greek 
MSS., ejected as a gloss the term areXfa {imperfectus), (Analyt. 
Pr. ii. 27, k 3), on which the argument for the common doctrine 
mainly rests; which has been also silently done by the Berlin 
Academicians, in their late splendid edition of Aristotle's works, 
on two of the three MSS. of the Organon, on which they found. 
We may notice, that the Masters of Louvain, in their comment- 
ary on the logical treatises of Aristotle (1535), observe, that "the 
word imperfectus is not to be found in some codices, but that 
it ought to be supplied is shown, both by the Greek [printed] 
copies and by the version of Boethius." Scaynus, in his Para- 
phrasis in Organum (1599), adopts the opinion without arguing 
the question ; and he does not seem to have been aware even of 
the Commentary of Pacius, published three years before. About 
1620, Corydaleus, bishop of Mitylene, who had studied in Italy, 
maintained in his Logic the opinion of Pacius, but without addi- 



1 In this country, some years ago, the question was stated in a popular miscellany, 
with his usual ability, by a learned friend to whom we pointed out the evidence ; but 
none of the subsequent writers have profited by the information. 



ENTHYMEME. 155 

tional corroboration ; though in his Rhetoric (reprinted by Fabri- 
cius, in the Bibliotheca Grceca), he adheres to the vulgar doc- 
trine. [Becmanus ( Orig. 1608 and Manud. 1626), and Heuman- 
nus (Poec. 1729), have nothing new or determinate, though they 
moot the,, question.] In 1724, Facciolati expanded the argument 
of Pacius — (for he, as the others, was ignorant of Scaynus, Ma- 
joragius, Phrissemius, Agricola, &c, and adds nothing of his own 
except an error or two) — into a special Acroama: but his elo- 
quence was not more effective than the reasoning of his predeces- 
sors ; and the question again fell into complete oblivion. Any one 
who competently reargues the point, will have both to supply 
and to correct. 1 

1 For example. — Pacius (whom Facciolati, by rhetorical hyperbole, pronounces— 
" Aristotelis Interpres, quot sunt, quot fuerunt, quotque futuri sunt, longe prsestan 
tissimus"), establishes it as one of the main pillars of his argument, that the Greek 
interpreters did not acknowledge the term dre\r]S : — " quoniam Johannes Grammaticus 
hie nullam ejus mentionem facit ; et tam ipse, quam Alexander, superiori libro, expli- 
cates definitionem syilogismi ab Aristotele traditam, ac distinguentes syllogismum ab 
argumentatione constante ex una propositione, non vocant hanc argumentationem 
enthymema, sed syllogismum povo\r)ppaTov." (Comm. in Analyt. Pr. ii. 27, § 3.) — 
Pacius is completely wrong.— Philoponus, or rather Ammonius Hermiae, on the place 
in question {Anal. Pr. ii. c. 27, § 3), states, indeed (as far as we recollect, for our 
copy of his Commentary is not at hand), nothing to the point. [On since referring to 
the passage, we find that too much had been conceded. M. Peisse, too, notices its 
irrelevancy.] The fallacy of such negative evidence is however shown in his exposi- 
tion of the Posterior Analytics, where he says ; — " ''Evdvprjpa fie elp-qrai, diro tov 
KaraXifXTrdveiv too va> e'vdvpelcrdai ttjv p.'iav Tvporaaiv.'" (f. 4. a. Edit. Aid. 1534.) 
Ammonius also, On the Jive words of Porphyry (f. 5 a, ed. Aid. 1546) expressly defines 
the Enthymeme — il A syllogism toiih one proposition unexpressed ; hence called an im- 
perfect syllogism.'" How inaccurate, moreover, Pacius is in regard to the still higher 
authority of Alexander (whose interpretation of the second book of the Prior Analytics, 
which contains the passage in question, is still in MS., and probably spurious), may 
be seen by his Commentary on the first book of the Prior Analytics (f. 7. a. b. Edit 
Aid. 1534), compared with his Commentary on the Topics (pp. 6, 7, Edit. Aid. 1513) 
This last we shall quote. He is speaking of Aristotle's definition of the Syllogism: — 
"TedevTcov" fie eivrev a'XX' ov " Tedevros," cos rives d^iovcriv^ alricofievoi tov 
Xoyov — on pr]8ev o~vXXoyt.o~TiKcos fit' epos redevTOS fteiKvvrai, aXX' eK 8vo to eXd^LO'- 
rov. Our yap ol Tvepl A-vriTrarpov (Tarsensem Tyriumvel) p.ovoXrj p. p,drovs 
crvXXoyLcrpovs Xeyovcriv, ovk elal o-vXXoyicrpol, aXX ev8ecbs epcOTcovrai. — — Toiou- 
toi fie elcri Kal ol prjTopiKol crvXXoyio-pol, ovs iv6vp.rjp.ara Xeyop.ev Kal yap ev 
exeivois SoKet yiyveadac Bid p.t.ds irpoTacrecos avXXoyio~pos, rco ttjv erepav yvcopipov 
ovcrav {i7r6 8iKao~Tcov, rj tcov aKpoartov TrpoaridecrGai oiov, k. t. X. — — Ato oi8e ol 
roiovroi Kvplas avXXoyio~pol, dXXci to oXov, prjTopiKol avXXoyi.crp.ol. 'E(p fav ovv 
fir] yvcopipov fCTTi to TtapaXenropevov, ovk ecmv errl tovtcov oiov re rov fit' evdvpr]- 
paros yiyveo-Qai crvXkoytcrp.6v Kal yap Kal an avrov rov ovop-aros (rvXXoyto~pds 
o~vv6eo~lv Tiva Xoycov eoiKe crqpalveLv coanep Kal 6 crvp^rjcpicrpos, yj/rjepcov. — From 
these passages (which are confirmed by the anonymous Greek author of the book 
"Touching Syllogisms"), it is manifest against Pacius: — 1°, That the 'Ev6ip.i]pa 
was used by the oldest commentators on Aristotle in the modern signification, as a 
syllogism of one expressed premise ; and, 2°, That the criAXoyioy*oS' povoXrjppaTos 
was not a term of the Aristotelian, but of the Stoical School. This appears clearly 
from Sextus Empiricus (Inst. ii. § 167; Contra Math. viii. § 443 ; ed. Fabr). Boe- 



15G LOGIC. 



We proceed to consider a still more important subject — the 
nature of the Inductive inference ; and regret that we can not 
echo the praises that have been bestowed on Dr. Whately'S 
analysis of this process. We do not, indeed, know the logician 



thiiis, and all the later Greek logicians (with the partial variation of Magentinus and 
Pachymercs), also favor the common opinion. Their authority is, however, of little 
weight, and the general result of the argument stands unaffected. — In these errors, it 
is needless to say, that Pacius is followed by Corydaleus and Facciolati. 

[I may here annex a general statement of the various meanings in which the term 
Enthymeme has been employed ; and though I can not tarry to give articulate refer- 
ences to the books in which the several opinions arc to be found, this I think will 
exhibit a far completer view of the multiform significations of the word than is else- 
where to be found. 

These meanings may be first distributed into four categories, according as the word 
is employed to denote: — I. A thought or proposition in general; — II. A -proposition, 
part of a syllogism; — III. A syllogism of some peculiar matter ; — IV. A syllogism of 
an unexpressed part. 

I. — Enthymeme denotes a thought or proposition: 

1. Of any kind. — See Cicero, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demetrius, Quintiliai»j 
Sopater, and one of the anonymous Scholiasts on Hermogenes. 

2. Of any kind, with its reason annexed.- — See Aristotle, Quintilian. 

3. Of imagination or feeling, as opposed to intellection. — Isocrates, Author of the Rhe- 
toric to Alexander, the Halicarnassian. 

4. Inventive. — Xenophon. 

5. Facetious, witty, antithetic. — Quintilian, Juvenal, Agelhus. 
II. — Enthymeme denotes a proposition, part of a syllogism: 

1. Any one proposition. — Held by Neocles (!) ; See Quintilian, Scholiast on Hermo- 
genes, Greek author of the Prolegomena Statuum, Matthasus Camariota. 

2. Conclusion of an Epichirema. — Hermogenes, Scholiast on Hermogenes, Rufus* 
Greek author of the Rhetorical Synopticon, Maximus Planudes, Georgius Pletho> 
M. Camariota. 

This category it is impossible always rigorously to distinguish from IV. 
III. — Enthymeme denotes a syllogism of a certain matter : 

1. Rhetorical of any kind. — Aristotle, Curius Fortunatianus, Harpocratian, Scholiast 
on Hermogenes, M. Camariota. 

2. From consequents, or from oppositcs — rcpngnants, contraries, dissimilars, $c. — 
Cicero. Quintilian, Hermogenes, Apsines, Julius Rufinianus. 

3. (Leaving that from consequents to be called Epjchirema), from opposites alone. 
— Cornificius, Author of the Rhetoric to Herennius, Quintilian, Hermogenes, 
Apsines. 

4. From signs and likelihoods. — Aristotle's special doctrine. 

IV. Enthymeme denotes a syllogism which there is unexpressed : 

1. a) One or two propositions. — So Victorinus in Cassiodorus. See also Cicero, Quin 
tilian and Boethius. 

b) One proposition ; and here : — 

2. Any proposition. — Held by Neocles (?) Quintilian, and the Greek author of the 
Prolegomena Rhetorica ; see also Scholiast on Hermogenes and G. Pletho. AriB- 
totle and Demetrius allow this, as a frequent accident of rhetorical syllogisms. 

3. Either premise. — This is the common doctrine of the Greek logicians, following 
Alexander and Ammonius, and followed by the Arabians, and of the Schoolmen 
following Boethius, Cassiodorus, Isidore of Seville, and the Arabians. It is also 
the doctrine of the moderns. All these parties agree in fathering it on the Stagi- 
rite. 

4. The major premise; (the non-expression of the minor being allowed to the common 
syllogism.) — This is held by two Greek logicians — Leo Magentinus and Georgius 



INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISM. 15V 

who has clearly defined the proper character of dialectical induc- 
tion, and there are few who have not in the attempt been guilty 
of the grossest blunders. Aristotle's doctrine on this point, 
though meagre, is substantially correct ; but succeeding logicians, 
in attempting to improve upon their master, have only corrupted 
what they endeavored to complete. As confusion is here a prin- 
cipal cause of error, we must simplify the question by some pre- 
liminary distinctions and exclusions. 

The term Induction (eTraycoyr)) has been employed to denote 
three very different things : — 1°, The objective process of inves- 
tigating individual facts, as preparatory to illation; — 2°, A mate- 
rial illation of the universal from the singular, warranted either 
by the general analogies of nature, or by special presumptions 
afforded by the object-matter of any real science ; — 3°, A formal 
illation of the universal from the individual, as legitimated solely 
by the laws of thought, and abstract from the conditions of this 
or that particular matter. 

That the first of these, an inventive process or process of dis- 
covery, is beyond the sphere of a critical science, is manifest ; nor 
has Induction, in this abusive application of the term, been ever 
arrogated to Logic. By logicians, however, the second and third, 
have been confounded into one, and, under every phasis of mis- 
conception, treated as a simple and purely logical operation. Yet 
nothing can be clearer than that these constitute two separate 
operations, and that the second is not properly a logical process 
at all. In logic, all inference is determined ratione formm, the 
conclusion being necessarily implied in the very conception of the 
premises. In this second Induction, on the contrary, the illation 
is effected vi materia, on grounds not involved in the notion of its 
antecedent. To take, for example, Dr. Whately's instance : The 
naturalist who, from the proposition — " Ox, sheep, deer, goat, 



Pachymeres. (By the way I may notice that Saxius is wrong in carrying up the 
former to the seventh century ; for Leo could not be older than the ninth, seeing 
■that he quotes Psellus.) The same opinion I find maintained by Cardanus ; but on 
a misinterpretation of Averroes. 

5. The conclusion. — The doctrine of Ulpian the commentator of Demosthenes, of 
Minucianus, and of a Scholiast on Hermogenes. Though this, as an exclusive 
©pinion, be not right, modern logicians are still farther wrong, in their otherwise 
erroneous doctrine of Enthymeme, for not recognizing as a third order, the non- 
expression of the conclusion ; since this is an ellipsis of the very commonest in our 
practice of reasoning. Keckermannus, indeed (ignorant of the ancient doctrine), 
while admitting the practice, expressly refuses to it the name of Enthymeme. 

6. Two propositions. — This opinion might seem to be held by some of the authorities 
under category II.] 



158 LOGIC. 

(i. e. some horned animals), ruminate," infers the conclusion— 
" All horned animals ruminate," may be warranted in this pro- 
cedure by the material probabilities of his science; but his illation 
is formally, is logically vicious. Here, the inference is not neces- 
sitated by the laws of thought. The some of the antecedent, as 
it is not thought, either to contain or to constitute, so it does not 
mentally determine, the all of the consequent ; and the reasoner 
must transcend the sphere of logic, if he would attempt to vindi- 
cate the truth of his conclusion. Yet, this, by the almost unani- 
mous consent of logicians, has been admitted into their science. 
Induction they have distinguished into perfect and imperfect ; 
according as the whole concluded was inferred from all, or from 
some only, of its constituent parts. They thus involved them- 
selves in a twofold absurdity. For, on the one hand, they recog- 
nized the consequence of the Imperfect Induction to be legitimate, 
though, admitting it to be not necessarily cogent ; as if logic 
could infer with a degree of certainty inferior to the highest: 
and, on the other, they attempted to corroborate this imbecility, 
by calling in real probabilities — physical, psychological, meta- 
physical ; which logic could neither, as a formal science, know, 
nor, as an apodictic science, take into account. This was a corol- 
lary of the fundamental error to which we have already alluded 
— the non-exclusion of all material modality from the domain of 
logic. Thus, it was maintained, that, in necessary matter, the 
Imperfect Induction was necessarily conclusive ; as if logic could 
be aware of what was necessary matter — as if, indeed, this itself 
were not the frequent point of controversy in the objective 
sciences, and did not, in fact, usually vary in them, as these 
same sciences advanced. 1 

The two first processes to which the name of Induction has 
been given, being thus excluded, it remains only to say a few 



1 [Thus, Sir Thomas Browne, expressing the doctrine of naturalists in the seven- 
teenth century, declared it to be " impossible, that a quadruped, should lay an egg, or 
hare the bill of a birdy To the older logicians, therefore, this proposition was of im- 
possible matter. The subsequent discovery of the Ornithorynchus Paradoxus has 
shown to the naturalist that his twofold impossibility was possible, and the proposi- 
tion is, consequently, to our recent logicians one of possible matter. — ''Dogs bark:'' 
this was erst of necessary matter; — "dogs" were then "all dogs," and the inductive 
conclusion compulsory and universal. (Wolfii Logica, $ 479.) Since an observation 
of the dogs of Labrador (I think), the proposition, as in our zoologies so in our Ionics, 
has fallen to contingent matter; "dogs" are now "some dogs," and the inductive 
conclusion, petitory, particular, or false. And so on. But in logic, as in theology — 
Variasse erroris est. 



INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISM. 159 

words in explanation of the third— of that Induction, with which 
alone logic is concerned, but the nature of which has by almost 
all logicians, been wholly misrepresented.' 

Logic does not consider things as they exist really and in 
themselves, but only the general forms of thought under which 
the mind conceives them ; in the language of the schools, logic is 
conversant, not about first, but about second notions? Thus a 
logical inference is not determined by any objective relation of 
Causality subsisting between the terms of the premises and con- 
clusion, but solely by the subjective relation of Reason and Con- 
sequent, under which they are construed to the mind in thought. 3 
The notion conceived as determining, is the Reason ; the notion 
conceived as determined, is the Consequent ; and the relation 
between the two is the Consequence. Now, the mind can think 
two notions under the formal relation of consequence, only in one 
or other of two modes. Either the determining notion must be 
conceived as a whole, containing- (under it), and therefore neces- 
sitating, the determined notion, conceived as its contained part 
or parts ;• — or the determining notion must be conceived as the 
parts constituting, and, therefore, necessitating the determined 
notion, conceived as their constituted whole. Considered, indeed, 
absolutely and in themselves, the whole and all the parts are 
identical. Relatively, however, to us, they are not ; for in the 
order of thought (and logic is only conversant with the laws of 
thought), the whole may be conceived first, and. then by mental 
analysis separated into its parts ; or the parts may be conceived 
first, and then by mental synthesis collected into a whole. Log- 
ical inference is thus of two and only of two, kinds : — it must 
proceed, either from the ivhole to the parts, or from the parts to 
the ivhole ; and it is only under the character of a constituted or 
containing whole, or of a constituting or contained part, that any 
thing can become the term of a logical argumentation. 

Before proceeding, we must, however, allude to the nature of 
the ivhole and part, about which logic is conversant. These are 



1 [What follows, on the logical doctrine of Induction, is, as it has generally been 
admitted to be, I am convinced, true. I would, however, now evolve it in somewhat 
different language. Compare among others : — Woolley's Logic (p. 120, sq.) ; ManseVs 
Aldrich (App. p. 50, sq.)] 

2 See p. 139, note (')• 

3 [The logical relation of Reason arid Consequent, as more than a mere corollary of 
the law of Non- contradict ion, in its three phases, is, I am confident of proving, errone- 
ous.] 



160 LOGIC. 

not real or essential existences, but creations of the mind itself, 
in secondary operation on the primary objects of its knowledge. 
Things may be conceived the same, inasmuch as they are con- 
ceived the subjects of the same attribute, or collection of attri- 
butes (i. e. of the same nature) : — inasmuch as they are conceived 
the same, they must be conceived as the parts constituent of, and 
contained under a ivhole : — and as they are conceived the same, 
only as they are conceived to be the subjects of the same nature, 
this common nature must be convertible with that whole. A logi- 
cal or universal whole is called a genus when its parts are thought 
as also containing wholes or species ; a species when its parts are 
thought as only contained parts or individuals. G-enus and species 
are each called a class. Except the highest and the lowest, the 
same class may thus be thought, either as a genus, or as a species. 

Such being the na.ture and relations of a logical whole and 
parts, it is manifest what must be the conditions under which the 
two kinds of logical inference are possible. The one of these, the 
process from the whole to the parts, is Deductive reasoning (or 
Syllogism proper) ; the other, the process from the parts to the 
whole, is Inductive reasoning. The former is governed by the 
rule : What belongs (or does not belong) to the containing whole, 
belongs (or does not belong) to each and all of the contained 
parts. The latter by the rule : — What belongs (or does not belong) 
to all the constituent parts (belongs or does not belong) to the 
constituted ivhole. These rules exclusively determine all formal 
inference ; whatever transcends or violates them, transcends or 
violates logic. Both are equally absolute. It would be not less 
illegal, to infer by the Deductive syllogism an attribute, belong- 
ing to the whole, of something it was not conceived to contain as 
a part ; than by the Inductive, to conclude of the whole, what is 
not conceived as a predicate of all its constituent parts. In either 
case, the consequent is not thought, as determined by the antece- 
dent ; — the premises do not involve the conclusion. 

The Deductive and Inductive processes are elements of logic 
equally essential. Each requires the other. The former is only 
possible through the latter ; and the latter is only valuable as 
realizing the possibility of the former. As our knowledge com- 
mences with the apprehension of singulars, every class or uni- 
versal ivhole is consequently only a knowledge at second-hand. 
Deductive reasoning is thus not an original and independent pro- 
cess. The universal major proposition, out of which it develops 



INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISM. 161 

the conclusion, is itself necessarily the conclusion of a foregone 
Induction, and, mediately or immediately, an inference — a col- 
lection, from individual objects of perception, or self-conscious- 
ness. Loo-ie, therefore, as a definite and self-sufficient science, 
must equally vindicate the formal purity of the synthetic illation, 
by which it ascends to its wholes, as of the analytic illation, by 
which it re-descends to their parts. (See Note (') p. 171). 

Not only is the Deductive, thus, in a general way, dependent 
for its possibility on the Inductive, syllogism; the former is, what 
has not been observed — in principle and detail— in whole and in 
p ar t — in end and in means — in perfection and imperfection, pre- 
cisely a counterpart or inversion of the latter. The attempts that 
have been made by almost every logician, except {perhaps ?) Aris- 
totle, 1 to assimilate and even identify the two processes, by reduc- 
ing the Inductive syllogism to the schematic proprieties of the 
Deductive — proceeding as they do on a total misconception of 
their analogy and differences, have contributed to involve the 
doctrine of Logical Induction in a cloud of error and confusion. 
The Inductive inference is equally independent, and, though far 
less complex, equally worthy of analysis as the Deductive ; it is 
governed by its own laws; and, if judged aright, must be esti- 
mated by its own standard. The correlation of the two processes 
is best exemplified by employing the same symbols in our ascent 
through an Inductive, and our re-descent through a Deductive 
syllogism. 



1 [I said perhaps, for Aristotle in his doctrine of Induction, in fact, implicitly con- 
tradicts himself. In his development of the inductive process, he is compelled to re- 
cognize, though he was not prepared to signalize, the universal quantification of the 
predicate in affirmative, propositions ; a quantification which he elsewhere, once and 
again, explicitly condemns, as, in all cases, absurd. It was the detection of this his 
inconsistency, which first led me to the conviction, that the predicate of an affirmative 
proposition may, formally, or by the laics of thought, he universal; and from thence, 
again, to the conviction (after this article was written), that the predicate in proposi- 
tions, both affirmative and negative, should be unexclusivcly quantified in logical lan- 
guage, as it is in logical thought. 

Here M. Peisse has the following note : "This 'perhaps 1 is very right, for it is by 
no means certain that Aristotle gave to the Inductive syllogism a form absolutely in- 
dependent. It is even more probable that he assimilated it to the Deductive, since he 
appears to prescribe a conversion of the minor premise, in order to legitimate the uni- 
versal conclusion (An. Pr. II. 23, § 4.) ; this in effect is to transform it into a syllo- 
gism of the first figure (in Barbara). It is even this passage which may have seduced 
subsequent logicians, admitting as it does, however, of a different interpretation." 

Aristotle, in expressing the extremes vaguely, as " the one" and " the other," is more 
accurate than the logicians, who astrict the reciprocating proposition to the minor pre- 
mise. For his example is only of a single case. On the doctrine, indeed, of a quan- 
tified predicate, the reciprocation may be, in cither premise, or in both.] 

L 



162 LOGIC 

Inductive. Deductive. 

x, y, z are A ; B is A ; 

x, y, z are (whole) B : x, y, z are (under) B; 

Therefore, B is A. Therefore, x, y, z are A. 

or or 

A contains x, y, z ; A contains B ; 

x, y, z constitute B ; B contains x, y, z ; 

Therefore, A contains B. Therefore, A contains x, y, z. 

These two syllogisms exhibit, each in its kind, the one natural 
and perfect figure. This will be at once admitted of the Deduc- 
tive, which is in the first. But the Inductive, estimated, as it has 
always been, by the standard of the Deductive, will appear a 
monster. It appears, on that standard, only in the third figure ;' 
and then, contrary to the rule of that figure it has an universal 
conclusion. 2 {Analyl. Pr. i. 22, § 8), But when we look less par- 
tially and more profoundly into the matter, our conclusion will be 
very different. 

1 We say — Induction appears a syllogism of the third figure, because, though so 
held by logicians, it is not. [!] The mistake arose from the ambiguity of the copula or 
substantive verb, which in different relations expresses either "arc contained under,'" 
or " constitule. ,, Thus, taking Aristotle's example : 

Man, horse, mule, are long-lived ; 

Man. horse, mule, are the whole class of animals wanting bile ; 

Therefore, the whole class of animals wanting bile are long-lived. 

Now here it is evident that the subject stands in a very different relation to its predi- 
cate in the major and minor premise ; though in both cases the connection is expressed 
by the same copula. In the former, the " are" expresses that the predicate determines 
the subject as a contained part ; in the latter, that the subject determines the predicate by 
constituting it a whole. Explicitly thus : 

Long-lived — contains — Man, horse, mule ; 

Man, horse, mule — constitute — Animal wanting bile ; 

Therefore, Long-lived — contains — Animal wanting bile. 

That the logicians have neglected to analyze the Inductive inference as an independ- 
ent process, and attempted to reduce it to the conditions of the Deductive ; is the cause 
or the effect of a primary deficiency in their technical language. They have no word 
to express the synthesis of a logical whole. The word constitute, &c, which we have, 
from necessity, employed in this sense, belongs properly to the relations of an Essen- 
tial (Physical or Metaphysical) whole, and parts. [I would now express this somewhat 
differently ; though not varying in the doctrine itself] 

- [It will be seen from the tenor of the text, that by the year 1833, I had become 
aware of the error in the doctrine of Aristotle and the logicians, which maintains that 
the predicate in affirmative propositions could only be formally quantified as particular ; 
nay, that Aristotle, by his practice in the inductive syllogism, virtually contradicts the 
speculative precept which he, over and over, expressly enounces for syllogism in gen- 
eral. It was not, however, for several years thereafter, that I made the second step ; 
by admitting in negative propositions aparticular predicate. The doctrine of a thorough- 
going quantification of the predicate, with its results, I have, however, publicly taught 
since the year 1840, at the latest. How this doctrine, when applied, at once simplifies 
and amplifies the logic of propositions and of syllogisms, it i3 not here requisite to state. 
(But see Appendix II.) I would only remark, in reference to certain recent misappre- 
hensions, that my doctrine has, and could have, no novelty from a mere recognition, 
as possible, of the eight prepositional forms — four affirmative and/ovr negative ; — forms, 
which I thus name and number : 



INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISM. 163 

In the first place, we find that the two syllogisms present so 
systematic a relation of contrast and similarity, that, the perfec- 
tion of the one being admitted, we are analogically led to presume 
the perfection of the other. In the propositions, the order of the 

Affirmative. Negative. 

i. Toto-total . All — is all — . Any — is not any — . 

ii. Toto-partial . All — is some — . Any — is not some — . 

iii. Parti-total . Some — is all — . Some — is not any — . 

iv. Parti-partial . Some — is some — . Some — is not some — . 

Every system of logic necessarily contemplated all these ; for of these every system 
of the science expressly allowed some, and expressly disallowed the others. By Aris- 
totle and logicians in general, of the Affirmative the even, of the Negative the odd, 
numbers are declared admissible, while the others are overtly rejected : — formally, at 
least, and of necessity ; for though a universal quantification of the predicate in affirm- 
atives has been frequently recognized, this was by logicians recognized (if not ignor- 
antly), as vi materia, contingently, and therefore extralogically ; nor am I aware of any 
previous attempt to prove, that, formally or by the laws of thought, even this proposi- 
tion had a right to claim its place in logic. It is not, therefore, on a mere enumeration 
of the eight propositional forms — far less is it on an ignorance of the ordinary objection 
by logicians — on a mistake of the meaning of the forms themselves — and on a blindness 
to the results of a thoroughgoing quantification of the predicate, that I would found 
any claim of novelty to my New Analytic. Yet on this ground it has been actually 
contested ! — In general, I may say, that aware of many partial manifestations of dis- 
content with the common doctrine, I know of no attempt to evince that the doctrine 
itself is radically wrong. Various of these manifestations are recorded by Mr. Baynes 
in his excellent "Essay on the new Analytic of Logical Forms." 

The thoroughgoing quantification of the predicate, in its appliances to negative pro- 
positions, has been demurred to by logicians well entitled to respect, who do not gain- 
say it in the case of affirmatives. But not only is this application allowable, not only 
is it systematic, not only is it useful — it is even necessary. — For, to speak even of 
its very weakest form, that of parti-partial negation, "Some — is not some — ",; this (to 
say nothing of its other uses) is the form, and the only form, which we naturally em- 
ploy in dividing a whole of any kind into parts : — " Some A is not some A." And is 
this form (that too inconsistently) to be excluded from logic — exempted from demand? 
— But, again, to prove both the obnoxious propositions summarily, and at once : — what 
objection, apart from the arbitrary laws of our present logics, can be taken to the fol- 
lowing syllogism 1 — 

" All man is some animal ; 
Any man is not (no man is) some animal ; 
Therefore, some animal is not some, animal.' 1 '' 

Vary this syllogism of the third, to any other figure ; it will always be legitimate by 
nature, if illegitimate to unnatural art. Taking it, however, as it is : — The negative 
minor, with its particular predicate, offends logical prejudice. But it is a propositional 
form, irrecusable, both as true in itself, and as necessary in practice. — Its converse, 
again, is even technically allowed ; and no proposition can possibly be right, if its 
converse is possibly wrong. For, to say, (as has been said, indeed, from Aristotle 
downward), that a parti-total negative proposition is inconvertible ; this is merely to 
confess, that the rules of the logicians are inadequate to the truth of logic and the 
realities of nature. In fact, it is to supply this very inadequacy, that the doctrine di 
a thoroughgoing quantification of the predicate is, perhaps, mainly required. A toto- 
partial negative can not, therefore, be scientifically refused. — But if the premises of 
a syllogism be correct, its conclusion must be obligatory. This conclusion, however, 
is a parti-partial negative : 

" Some animal (say, rational) is not some animal (say, irrational)." 



164 LOGIC. 

terms remains unchanged : but the order of the propositions 
themselves is reversed ; the conclusion of the one syllogism form- 
ing the major premise of the other. Of the terms the major is 
common to both ; but (as noticed by Aristotle) the middle term 
of the one is the minor of the other. In the common minor pre- 
mise, the terms, though identical, have, with the different nature 
of the process, changed their relation in thought. In the Induct- 
ive, the parts being conceived as constituting the'whole, are the 
determining notion ; whereas, in the Deductive, the parts being 
conceived as contained under the whole, are the determined. 

But, in the second place, however apparently dissimilar in 
figure and proportion may be the two syllogisms on this partial 
standard, it will be found, if we ascend to a higher, that a com- 
mon general principle regulates a similar, nay, a one exclusive 
perfection in each. The perfection of figure in all syllogisms is 
this : — That the middle term should be the determined notion in 
the proposition, the determining notion in the assumption. — This 
condition is realized in the first figure of the Deductive syllogism. 
There the middle term is the subject (contained, determined no- 
tion) in the proposition or major premise ; and the predicate (con- 
taining, determining notion) in the minor premise or assumption. 
— In like manner, in our Inductive syllogism, the middle term 
is the subject (contained, determined notion) of the proposition, 
and the constituent (determining notion) of the assumption. 
Thus, not only are the Inductive and Deductive syllogisms, in a 
general sense, reversed processes ; the perfect figure of the one is 
the exact evolution or involution of the perfect figure of the other. 
—The same analogy holds with their imperfections. Taking, for 
example, what logicians have in general given as the perfected 
figure, but which is, in fact, an unnatural perversion of the In- 
ductive syllogism (t. e. its reduction to the first figure, by con- 
verting the terms of the minor premise), we shall find, that its 
reversal into a Deductive syllogism affords, as we should have 
anticipated, only a kindred imperfection (in the third figure). 



A. parti-partial negative is thus a proposition, not only logically valid, but logically 
indispensable. 

Nothing, it may be observed, is more easy than to misapply a form ; nothing is more 
easy than to employ a weaker, when we are entitled to employ a stronger proposition. 
But from the special and factitious absurdity, thus emerging, to infer the general and 
natural absurdity of a propositional form — this, certainly, is not a logical procedure. 
— (In part, coincident with what I have elsewhere, and that this very day, been obliged 
;o state. — See p. 626.)] 



INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISM. 165 

Inductive. Deductive. 

x, y, z are A ; B is A ; 

B is x, y, z ; B is x, y, z ; 

Therefore, B is A. Therefore, x, y, z are A. 
or or 

A contains x, y, z ; A contains B ; 

x, y, z contain B ; x, y, z contain B ; 

Therefore, A contains B. Therefore, A contains x, y, z. 

We call this reduction of the Inductive syllogism an unnatural 
perversion ; because, in the converted minor premise, the consti- 
tuent parts are perverted into a containing whole, and the con- 
taining whole into a subject, contained under its constituent 
parts. 

After these hints of what we deem the true nature of logical 
Induction, we return to Dr. Whately ; whose account of this pro- 
cess is given principally in the two following passages. 

The first : — " Logic takes no cognizance of Induction, for instance, or 
of a priori reasoning, &c, as distmctforms of argument ; for when thrown 
into the syllogistic, form, and when letters of the alphabet are substituted 
for the terms (and it is thus that an argument is properly to be brought 
under the cognizance of logic), there is no distinction between them : — 
e. g. a ' Property which belongs to the ox, sheep, deer, goat, and antelope, 
belongs to all horned animals ; rumination belongs to these ; therefore to 
all.' This which is an inductive argument, is evidently a syllogism in 
Barbara. The essence of an inductive argument (and so of the other 
kinds which are distinguished from it) consists not in the form of the ar- 
gument, but in the relation which the subject-matter <A the premises bears- 
to that of the conclusion." (P. 110.) — The second : — " In the process of 
reasoning by which we deduce, from our observation of certain known 
cases, an inference with respect to unknown ones, we are employing a 
syllogism in Barbara with the major premise suppressed ; that being al- 
ways substantially the same, as it asserts, that, ' what belongs to the indi- 
vidual or individuals we have examined, belongs to the whole class under 
which they come.' " (P. 216.) 

This agrees, neither with the Aristotelic doctrine, nor with 
truth. 

We must presume, from his silence, that our author, in his 
analysis of the inductive process, was not aware of any essential 
deviation from the doctrine of Aristotle. This he does not seem 
to have studied, either in the Organon, or in any of its authentic 
expositors ; and nothing can be conceived more contradictory, 
than the statements of the philosopher on this subject and those 1 
of Dr. Whately. — Aristotle views the Inductive and the Deduct- 
ive syllogisms as, in certain respects, similar in form ; in others,' 
as diametrically opposed. Dr. Whately regards them as formally 
identical, and only discriminated by a mater al difference, i. e. 



166 LOGIC. 

logically considered, by no difference at all. — Aristotle regards the 
Ded active syllogism as the analysis of a logical whole into its 
paiis — as a descent from the (more) general to the (more) parti- 
cular ; the Inductive as a synthesis of logical parts into a logi- 
cal whole — as an ascent from the (more) particular to the 
(more) general. Dr. Whately. on the other hand, virtually anni- 
hilates the latter process, and identifies the Inductive with the 
Deductive inference. — Aristotle makes Deduction necessarily de- 
pendent on Induction ; he maintains that the highest or most 
universal axioms which constitute the primary and immediate 
propositions of the former, are all conclusions previously furnished 
by the latter. "Whately, on the contrary, implicitly asserts the 
independence of the syllogism proper, as he considers the conclu- 
sions of Induction to be only inferences evolved from a more uni- 
versal major. — Aristotle recognizes only a perfect Induction, i. e. 
an enumeration (actual or presumed) of all the parts ; Whately 
only an imperfect, i. e. an enumeration professedly only of some. 
— To Aristotle, Induction is a syllogism, apparently, of the third 
figure ; to Whately a syllogism of the first. — If Whately be 
right, Aristotle is fundamentally wrong; wrong in admitting 
Inductive reasoning within the sphere of logic at all; wrong in 
discriminating Induction from Syllogism proper ; wrong in all the 
particulars of the contrast. 

But that the Philosopher is not in error is evident at once ; 
whereas the Archbishop's doctrine is palpably suicidal. On that 
doctrine, the Inductive reasoning is "a syllogism in Barbara, 
the major premiss being always substantially the same: — What 
belongs to the individual or individuals ive have examined, be- 
longs to the ivhole class under which they come" 

Now, we ask : — In what manner do we obtain this major, in 
the evolution of which all Induction consists? Here there are 
only four possible answers. — 1°, This proposition (like the dictum 
de omni et de nullo, and the axiom of the convertibility of the 
whole and its parts), it may be said is (analytically) self-evident, 
its negation implying a contradiction. This answer is manifestly 
false. For so far from being necessitated by the laws of thought, 
it is in opposition to them ; the ivhole of the consequent not being 
determined in thought by the some of the antecedent. — 2°, It may 
be said, to be acquired by Induction. This, however, would be 
absurd ; inasmuch as Induction itself is, ex hypothesi, only pos- 
sible, through and after the principle it is thus adduced to con- 



INDUCTIVE SYLLOGISM. 167 

struct. This of the proposition as a whole. The same is also 
true of its parts. " Class" is a notion, itself the result of an In- 
duction ; it can not, therefore, be postulated as a pre-requisite or 
element of that process itself. A similar remark applies to "pro- 
perty." — 3°, It may be said to be deduced from a higher axiom. 
What then is such axiom ? That has not been declared. And 
if such existed, the same questions would remain to be answered 
regarding the higher proposition which are now required in rela- 
tion to the lower. — 4°, It may be asserted to be (as Kant would 
say, synthetically) given as an ultimate principle of our intellec- 
tual constitution. This will not do. In the first place, if such 
principle exist, it only inclines, it does not necessitate. In the 
second, by appealing to it, we should transcend our science, con- 
found the logical and formal with the metaphysical and material. 
In the third, we should thus attempt to prove a logical law from 
a psychological observation ; i. e. establish an a priori, a neces- 
sary science. on a precarious experience — an experience admitted 
perhaps by the disciples of Reid and Royer-Collard, but scouted 
by those of Grassendi and Locke. 1 

Logicians, we already observed, have been guilty of a funda- 
mental error in bringing the distinction of perfect and of imper- 
fect Induction within the sphere of their science, as this distinc- 
tion proceeds on a material, consequently on an extralogical, dif- 
ference. In this error, however, Dr. Whately exceeds all other 
logicians, recognizing, as he does, exclusively, that Induction, 
which is only precariously valid, and valid only through an ex- 
tralogical presumption. This common major premise, if stated 
as necessary, is (formally and materially) false ; if stated as prob- 
able, it is (formally) illegitimate, even if not (materially) untrue, 
both because an inferior degree of certainty is incompatible with 
an apodictic science, and because the amount of certainty itself 
must, if not capriciously assumed, be borrowed from evidence de- 
pendent on material conditions beyond the purview of a formal 
science. 

Dr. Whately is not less unfortunate in refuting the opinions 
of other logicians touching Induction, than in establishing his own. 



1 " It is by induction that all axioms are known, such as : — ' Things that are equal 
to the same are equal to one another ;' ' A whole is greater than its parts ;' and all other 
mathematical axioms." Huyshe, p. 132. .The same doctrine is held by Hill, p 176. 
—Is such the Oxford Metaphysics [This doctrine, the ingenious author of "The 
Regeneration of Metaphysics" (pp. 81, 104), charges also on Dr. Whately.] 



168 LOGIC. 

" In this process," he says, " we are employing a syllogism in Barbara 
with the major premiss suppressed ; not the minor, as Aldrich represents 
it. The instance he gives will sufficiently prove this : — ' This and that, 
and the other magnet, attract iron ; therefore so do all.' If this were, as 
he asserts, an enthymeme whose minor is suppressed, the only premise 
which we could supply to fill it up would be, ' all magnets are this, that, 
and the other;' which is manifestly false." (P. 217.) 

Aldrich has faults sufficient of his own, without taking burden 
of the sins of others. He is here singly reprehended for saying 
only what, his critic seems not aware, had been said by all logi- 
cians before him. The suppressed minor premise even obtained 
in the schools the name of the Constantia ; and it was not until 
the time of Wolf l that a new-fangled doctrine, in this respect the 
same as Whately's, in some degree superseded the older and cor- 
recter theory. " In the example of Aldrich," says our author, 
" the supressed minor premiss, f all magnets are this, that, and 
the other,' is manifestly false." Why ? — Is it because the propo- 
sition affirms that a certain three magnets (" this, that, and the 
other") are all magnets ? Even admitting this, the objection is 
null. The logician has a perfect right to suppose this or any 
other material falsity for an example ; all that is required of him 
is, that his syllogism should be formally correct. Logic only 
proves on the hypothetical truth of its antecedents. As Magen- 
tinus notices, Aristotle's example of Induction is physiologically 
false ; but it is not on that account a whit the worse as a dialec- 
tical illustration. The objection is wholly extralogical. — But this 
is not, in fact, the meaning of the proposition. The words (in the 
original "hie, et ille, et iste magnes") are intended to denote 
every several magnet. Aldrich borrows the instance from San- 
derson, by whom it is also more fully expressed : — " Iste magnes 
trahit ferrum, et ille, et hie, et pariter se habet in reliquis" &c. 
— Perhaps, however, and this is the only other alternative, Dr. 
Whately thinks the assumption " manifestly false," on the ground 
that no extent of observation could possibly be commensurate 
with " all magnets." This objection likewise lies beyond the 
domain of science. The logician, qua logician, knows nothing 
of material possibility and impossibility. To him all is possible 



[' I said generally " the time of Wolff' for I recollected that some German logicians 
prior to him, had held the same doctrine. It was however Wolf's authority which 
rendered the innovation general. — M. Pejsse has here the following note : " The 
germ of this doctrine is to be found in Gassendi. (Inst. Log. Pars iii. canon 11. 
Optra, i. 113.")] 



INDUCTIVE PROCESS. 169 

that does not involve a contradiction in terms. At the same time, 
the present is merely the logical manner of wording the proposi- 
tion. The physical observer asserts on the analogy of his science 
" This, that, the other magnet, &c, represent, all magnets ;" 
which the logician accepting, brings under the conditions, and 
translates into the language of his — " This, that, the other mag- 
net, &c, are all magnets," i. e. are conceived as constituting the 
whole — Magnet. 

Dr. Whately's errors relative to Induction are, however, sur- 
passed by those of another able writer, Mr. Hampden, in regard 
both to that process itself, and to the Aristotelic exposition of its 
nature ; — errors the more inconceivable, as he professes to have 
devoted peculiar attention to the subject, which, he says, " de- 
serves a more peculiar notice, as throwing light on Aristotle's 
whole method of philosophizing, while it shows how far he ap- 
proximated to the induction of modern philosophy." His words 
are : 

" To obtain an accurate notion of the being of any thing, we require a 
definition of it. A definition of the thing corresponds, in dialectic, with the 
essential notion of it in metaphysics. This abstract notion, then, accord- 
ing to Aristotle, constituting the true scientific view of a thing — and all 
the real knowledge consequently of the properties of the thing depending 
on the right limitation of this notion — some exact method of arriving at 
definitions which would express these limitations, and serve as the princi- 
ples of sciences, became indispensable in such a system of philosophy. But 
in order to attain such definitions, a process of induction was required — not 
merely an induction of that kind, which is only a peculiar form of syllo- 
gism, enumerating all the individuals implied in a class instead of the 
whole class collectively, but an induction of a philosophical character, and 
only differing from the induction of modern philosophy so far as it is em- 
ployed about language. We shall endeavor to show this more fully. There 
are, then, tv/o kinds of induction treated of by Aristotle. The first, that 
of simple enumeration." — (After explaining with ordinary accuracy the 
first, in fact the only, species of induction he proceeds :) — " But there is 
also a higher kind of induction employed by Aristotle, and pointed out by 
him expressly in its subserviency to the exact notions of things, by its 
leading to the right definitions of them in words. As it appears that 
words, in a dialectical point of view, are classes more or less comprehen- 
sive of observations on things, it is evident that we must gradually ap- 
proximate toward a definition of any individual notion, by assigning class 
within class, until we have narrowed the extent of the expression as far as 
language will admit. {Analyt. Post. ii. c. 13, § 21.) The first definitions 
of any object are vague, founded on some obvious resemblance which it 
exhibits compared with other objects. This point of resemblance we ab- 
stract in thought, and it becomes, when expressed in language, a genus or 
class, under which we regard the object as included. A more attentive 
examination suggests to us less obvious points of resemblance between 



170 LOGIC. 

this object and some of those with which he had classed it before. Thus 
carrying on the analysis — and by the power of abstraction giving an in- 
dependent existence to those successive points of resemblance — we obtain 
subaltern genera or species, or subordinate classes included in that original 
class with which the process of abstraction commenced. As these several 
classifications are relative to each other, and dependent on the class with 
which we first commenced, the definition of any notion requires a successive 
enumeration of the several classes in the line of abstraction, and hence is 
said technically to consist of genus and differentia; the genus being the 
subordinate classes in the same line of abstraction. Now, the process by 
which we discover these successive genera, is strictly one of philosophical 
induction. As in the philosophy of nature in general, we take certain 
facts as the basis of inquiry, and proceed by rejection and exclusion of 
principles involved in the inquiry, until at last — there appearing no ground 
for further rejection — we conclude that we are in possession of the true 
principle of the object examined ; so, in the philosophy of language, we 
must proceed by a like rejection and exclusion of notions implied in the 
general term with which we set out, until we reach the very confines of 
that notion of it with which our inquiry is concerned. This exclusion is 
effected in language, by annexing to the general term denoting the class 
to which the object is primarily referred, other terms not including under 
them those other objects or notions to which the general term applies. 
For thus, while each successive term in the definition, in itself, extends to 
more than the object so defined — yet all viewed together do not ; and 
this their relative bearing on the one point constitutes the being Gf the 
things. This I thus illustrated by Aristotle ; — ' If we are inquiring.' he 
says, ' what magnanimity is, we must consider the instances of certain 
magnanimous persons whom we know, what one thing they all have so far 
forth as they are such ; as, if Alcibiades was magnanimous, or Achilles, 
or Ajax; — what one thing they all have ; say, impatience under insult; 
for one made war, another raged, the other slew himself. Again, in the 
instances of others, as of Lysander or Socrates — if here it is, to be unaltered 
by prosperity or adversity; — taking these two cases, I consider, what this 
apathy in regard to events, and impatience under insult, have the same 
in them. If, now. they have nothing the same, there must be two species 
of magnanimity.' " (P. 513.) 

Mr. Hampden afterward states, inter alia, that the induction 
of Aristotle, "having for its object to determine accurately in 
words the notion of the being of things proceeds, according to 
the nature of language, from the general, and ends in the parti- 
cular ; whereas the investigation of a law of nature proceeds from 
the particular, and ends in the general. Dialectical induction is 
synthetical, while philosophical induction is analytical in the 
result." On this ground, he explains the meaning of the term 
{eira'yco^rj), and defends the induction of Aristotle against its dis- 
paragement by Lord Bacon. 

We had imagined, that every compend of Logic explained the 
two grand methods of Investigating' the Definition ; but upon 



INDUCTIVE PROCESS. 171 

looking into the Oxford treatises on this science, we were surprised 
to find, that this, among other important matters, had in all of 
them been overlooked. This may, in part, enable us to surmise 
how Mr. Hampden could have so misconceived so elementary a 
point, as to have actually reversed the doctrine, not only of Aris- 
totle, but of all other philosophers. A few words will be sufficient 
to illustrate the nature of the error. 

In the thirteenth chapter (Pacian division) of the second book 
of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle treats of the manner of hunt- 
ing out, as he terms it, the essential nature (to tL iari, quidditas) 
of a thing, the enunciation of which nature constitutes its defini- 
tion. This may be attempted in two contrary ways. — By the 
one, we may descend from the category, or higher genus of the 
thing to be defined, dividing and subdividing, through the oppo- 
site differences, till we reach the genus under which it is proxi- 
mately contained ; and this last genus, along with the specific 
difference by which the genus is divided, will be the definition 
required. — By the other, we may ascend from the singulars, con- 
tained under the thing to be defined (which is necessarily an 
universal), by an exclusion of their differences, until we attain 
an attribution common to them all, which attribution will supply 
the definition sought.— The former of these is, after Plato, called 
by Aristotle, and logicians in general, the method of Division; 
the higher genus being regarded as the (universal) whole, the 
subaltern genera and species as the (subject) parts into which it 
is divided. The extension here determines the totality. — The 
latter, which is described but not named by Aristotle, is variously 
denominated by his followers. Some, as his Grreek commentators, 
taking the totality as determined by the comprehension, view the 
singulars as so many (essential) wholes, of which the common 
attribute or definition is a part, and accordingly call this mode 
of hunting up the essence the Analytic ; others again, regarding 
the genus as the whole, the species and individuals as the parts, 
style it the Compositive, or Synthetic, or Collective; 1 while 

1 " h' one respect," says Aristotle, " the Genus is called a part of the Species ; in an- 
other, the Species a part of the Genus." (Metaph. L. v. c. 25, t. 30. Compare Phys. 
L. iv. c. 5 (3) t. 23 ; and Porph. Intr. c. 3, § 39.) In like manner, the same method, 
viewed in different relations, may be styled either Analysis or Synthesis. This, how- 
ever, has not been acknowledged ; nor has it even attracted notice, that different logi- 
cians and philosophers, though severally applying the terms only in a single sense, 
are still at cross purposes with each other. One calls Synthesis what another calls 
Analysis — one calls Progression what another calls Regression ; and this both in an- 



172 LOGIC. 

others, in fine, looking simply to the order of the proeess itself, 
from the individual to the general, name it the Inductive. These 
last we shall imitate. 

Now, in the chapter referred to, Aristotle considers and con- 
trasts these two methods. — In regard to Division (k 8-20) he 
shows on the one hand (against Plato, who is not named), that 
this process is not to be viewed as having any power of demon- 
stration or argument ;' and on the other (against Speusippus, as 
we learn from Eudemus, through the Greek expositors), that it is 
not wholly to he rejected as worthless, being useful, in subservi- 
ence always to the other method of induction, to insure — that 
none of the essential qualities are omitted — that these qualities 
alone are taken — and that they are properly subordinated and 
arranged. — In reference to the Inductive method, which is to be 
considered as the principal, he explains its nature, and delivers 
various precepts for its due application. (§ 7, 21, etc.) 

This summary will enable the reader to understand Mr. Hamp- 
den's perversion of Aristotle's doctrine. — In the first place: that 
gentleman is mistaken, in supposing that the philosopher applies 
the term Induction to any method of investigating the definition 
discussed by him in the chapter in question. The word does not 
once occur. — In the second place : he is still farther deceived, in 
thinking that Aristotle there bestows that name on a descent from 
the universal to the particular ; whereas in his philosophy — indeed 
in all philosophies — it exclusively pertains to an ascent from the 
particular to the universal. — In the third place : he is wrong, in 
imagining that Aristotle there treats only of a single method, for 
he considers and contrasts two methods, not only different, but 
opposed. 2 — In the fourth place : he is mistaken, in understanding, 



cient and modern times. We ourselves think it best to regulate the use of these terms 
by reference to the notion of a •whole and parts, of any kind. This we do, and do 
professedly. Mr. Hampden, but probably without intending it, does the same : in one 
part of the passage we have quoted, speaking of Division (his logical induction), as 
an "analysis;" in another, describing it as "synthetical." [The total omission of 
the distinction of Comprehension and Extension (though this be the very turning 
point of logic), by former Oxford logicians, is remarkable in itself, and has been the 
cause, as is here exemplified, of much error and confusion. Dr. Whately, indeed, not 
only overlooks the distinction, but he often reverses the language in which it is logi- 
cally expressed.] 

1 This he had elsewhere done ; Pr. Analyt. 1. i. c. 31. Post. Analyt. 1. ii. c. 5, et 
alibi. 

2 Mr. Hampden's error, we suspect, originates in the circumstance that Pacius 
(whom Duval follows in the Organon) speaks, in his analytic argument of the chapter, 
of a methodus divisiva and a mctkodus inductiva ; and that Mr. Hampden, using Duval's 



INDUCTION: INVESTIGATION OF THE DEFINITION. 173 

as applied to one contrary, the observations which Aristotle ap- 
plies, and which are only applicable, in expounding the reverse. 
For example : he quotes in the note, as pertinent to Division, 
words of the original relative to induction ; and the instance (from 
the definition of Magnanimity) adduced to illucidate the one 
method, is in reality employed by Aristotle to explain the other. 
— In the fifth place : his error is enhanced , by seeing in his own 
single method the subordinate of Aristotle's two ; and in lauding 
as a peculiarly important part of the Aristotelic philosophy, a 
process in the exposition of which Aristotle has no claim to origi- 
nality, and to which he himself, here and elsewhere, justly attri- 
butes only an inferior importance. — In the sixth place : in contra- 
diction equally of his whole philosophy and of the truth of nature, 
the Stagirite is made to hold that our highest abstractions are 
first in the order of time ; that our process of classification is 
encentric, not eccentric ; that a child generalizes substance and 
accident before egg and white. 

Mr. Hampden's statement of the Inductive method being thus 
the reverse of truth, it is needless to say that the etymological 
explanation he has hazarded of the term (iirayayyi]) must be erro- 
neous. — But even more erroneous is the pendant by which he 
attempts to illustrate his interpretation of that term. " The 
aircuywyrj, Abduction spoken of by Aristotle [Anal. Prior, ii. c. 
25), is just the reverse — a leading away, by the terms successive- 
ly brought from the more accurate notion conveyed by a former 
one." The Abduction, here referred to, is no more such a " lead- 
ing away" than it is a theft. It is a kind of syllogism — of what 
nature we can not longer tresspass on the patience of our readers 
by explaining. For the same reason we say nothing of some 
other errors we had remarked in Mr. Hampden's account of that 
branch of the Aristotelic philosophy which we have been now 
considering. 

edition, in his extemporaneous study of the subject, not previously aware that there 
are two opposite methods of investigating the definition, took up the notion that these 
were merely a twofold expression for the same thing. Mr. Hampden is an able man : 
but to understand Aristotle in any of his works, he must be understood in all ; and to 
be understood in all, he must be long and patiently studied by a mind disciplined to 
speculation, and familiar with the literature of philosophy. 



V.-DEAF AND DUMB. 

HISTORY OF THEIR INSTRUCTION, IN REFERENCE 
TO DALGARNO. 



(July, 1835.) 

The works of George Dalgarno, of Aberdeen, 4to. Reprinted 
at Edinburgh : 1834. 

In taking up this work, we owe perhaps some apology for the 
deviation from our ordinary rules ; inasmuch as it is merely a 
reprint of ancient matter, the publication also not professedly 
reaching beyond the sphere of a private society — the Maitland 
Club. We are induced, however, to make a qualified exception 
in favor of this edition of Dalgarno's Works, in consideration of 
the extreme rairity of the original treatises, added to their high 
importance ; and because the liberality of the editors (Mr. Henry 
Cockburn and Mr. Thomas Maitland), has not limited their con- 
tribution merely to members of that society, but extended it to 
the principal libraries of the kingdom, and, we believe, to many 
individuals likely to feel an interest in its contents. We shall, 
however, relax our rule only to the measure of a very brief 
notice. 

Dalgarno's Works are composed of two treatises : the first en- 
titled — " Ars Signo7'um, Vulgo Character Universalis et Lingu-d 
Philosophica. Londini: 1661 ;" the second — " Didascalocophus, 
or the Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor; to which is addled a Dis- 
course of the Nature and Number of Double Consonants : both 
which Tracts being the first {for what the Author knows) that 
have been published upon either of the subjects. Printed at the 
Theatre in Oxford, 1680." 

Of the author himself, all that is known is comprised in the 
following slight notice by Anthony a Wood. " The reader may 
be pleased to know, that one George Dalgarno, a Scot, wrote a 



. DALGARNO. - 176 

book entitled Ars Signorum, c^c, London, 1661. This book, 
before it went to press, the author communicated to Dr. Wilkins, 
who, from thence taking a hint of greater matter, carried it on, 
and brought it up to that which you see extant. This Dalgarno 
was born at old Aberdeen, and bred in the University at New 
Aberdeen ; taught a private grammar school, with good success, 
for about thirty years together, in the parishes of S. Michael, and 
S. Mary Magdalen, in Oxford ; wrote also Didascalocophus, or the 
Deaf and Dumb Maris Tutor ; and dying of a fever, on the 28th 
of August, 1687, aged sixty or more, was buried in the North 
body of the Church of S. Mary Magdalen." {Athena Oxon., Yol. 
II. , p. 506). With the exception of an accidental allusion to his 
treatise on Signs, by Leibnitz, in a letter to Mr. Burnet of Kem- 
ney, from whom he had probably received that work of a fellow 
Aberdonian, and some slight traditionary statements by the Grer» 
man historians of literature, the memory of Dalgarno had wholly 
perished, when attention was again awakened to the originality 
and importance of his speculations by the late Mr. Dugald Stew- 
art, in various passages of his writings ; and these having sug- 
gested to the editors the idea of the present reprint, they are very 
properly collected in their preliminary statement, as the best of 
testimonies to its importance. 

In speaking of Dalgarno's two treatises, we shall reverse their 
chronological as well as natural order, and take them in what 
appears to us the order of their practical interest. 

To appreciate the high and peculiar value of our author's treat- 
ise on the education of the Deaf and Dumb, it is necessary to 
take a survey of what had actually been accomplished in this 
important department of applied psychology, previous to the ap- 
pearance of his treatise. A regular history of this branch of edu- 
cation, with extracts from the writings of its earlier promoters, 
now in general extremely rare, would form an interesting pres- 
ent, both to the speculative and to the practical philosopher. In 
the total absence of such a work, we may be pardoned in throw- 
ing briefly together a few scattered notices, which have accident- 
ally crossed us in the course of other inquiries. 

In deducing a history of the progress in the art of educating 
the deaf and dumb, there are certain separate points of accom- 
plishment which it is proper to distinguish. These are : 1°, The 
teaching the pupil to understand, by the motions of the lips, &c. 
the speech of those around him ; 2°, To communicate his own 



176 DEAF AND DUMB. 

thoughts in the articulate sounds of a language ; 3°, To read 
writing; 4°, To employ letters and words, denoted by certain 
conventional motions of the hand. 5°, There is, however, a fifth 
point, of still higher and more difficult accomplishment, and on 
which the easy, certain, and complete success of the whole at- 
tempt depends; — that is, a determination of the psychological 
laws, by which the order and objects of instruction, under the 
condition of deafness, is regulated. 

As the result of a philosophical deduction, it was naturally to 
be expected, that the last of these should only be realized, after 
the possibility and conditions of the method in general had been 
empirically proved in the other four. In the present instance, 
however, theory did not merely, follow practice — it long prevented 
its application ; and the deaf and dumb had been actually taught 
the use of speech, before the philosophers would admit their capa- 
city of instruction. The dictum of Aristotle, that of all the 
senses, hearing contributes the most to intelligence and knowledge 
(ek <f)p6vr)(Tiv 7r\ei<rTov), was taken, apart from the qualifications 
under which that illustrious thinker advanced the proposition 
(viz. that this was only by accident, inasmuch as hearing is the 
sense of sound, and sound contingently the vehicle of thought) ; 
and was alleged to prove, what was in fact the very converse of 
its true import, that the deaf are wholly incapable of intellectual 
instruction. 

In like manner, a dogma of the physicians, which remounts we 
believe to Galen, that dumbness was not, as Aristotle had affirm- 
ed, in general a mere consequent of deafness, but the effect of a 
common organic lesion of the lingual and auditory nerves, arising 
as they do from a neighboring origin in the brain — was generally 
admitted as conclusive against the possibility of a deaf person 
being taught to articulate sounds. It was, therefore, with great 
wonder and doubt, that the first examples of the falsehood of these 
assumptions were received by the learned. The disabilities 
which the Roman law, and the older codes of every European 
jurisprudence, imposed on the deaf and dumb, were all founded 
in the principle — " Surdus natus, mutus est et plane indisciplina- 
bilis" as the great French jurist, Molinaeus expresses it. 

Rodolphus Agricola, who died in 1485, is the oldest testimony 
we recollect to a capacity in the deaf and dumb of an intelligent 
education ; and it is remarkable, that there is none older. In the 
last chapter of his posthumous work, De Invcntione Dialeetica, 



DALGARNO. 177 

as an illustration of "the immense and almost incredible power 
of the human mind," he instances "as little less than miraculous, 
what he himself had witnessed — a person deaf from infancy, and 
consequently dumb, who had learned to understand writing, and, 
as if possessed of speech, was able to write down his whole 
thoughts." — Ludovicus Vives, some fifty years later, in his treat- 
ise JDe Anima (L. ii. c. De Discendi ratione), after noticing that 
Aristotle had justly styled the ear the organ of instruction, ex- 
presses his "wonder that there should have been a person born 
deaf and dumb who had learned letters : let the belief in this, 
rest with Rodolphus Agricola, who has recorded the fact, and 
affirmed that he himself beheld it." The countrymen of the un- 
believing Vives were, however, destined, in the following gene- 
ration, to be the inventors of. the art in question. For — 

The oldest indication we have, of any systematic attempt at 
educating the deaf, is by Franciscus Vallesius, the celebrated 
Spanish physician, who, in his Philosophia Sacra, published in 
1590, mentions that "a friend of his, Petrus Pontius, a Benedic- 
tine monk, taught the deaf to speak by no other art than instruct- 
ing them first to write, then pointing out to them the objects sig- 
nified by the written characters, and finally guiding them to 
those motions of the tongue, &c, which correspond to the charac- 
ters." What more is now accomplished ? Petrus Pontius — who 
was a Spaniard, and not to be confounded with the celebrated 
Scotist, Joannes Poncius, Minorite, and native of Ireland — did 
not publish an account of his method. This, however, was done 
by John Paul Bonnet, of Arragon, secretary to the Constable of 
Castile, who, in 1620, printed in Spanish, at Madrid, his Reduc- 
tion of Letters, and Art of Instructing the Dumb. That this 
work of Bonnet contains only the practice of Pontius, is proved 
by the evidence of Perez in the book itself, and by that of Anto- 
nius in his Bibliotheca Hispanica. Of the signal success of the 
art in the hands of Pontius (among others on two brothers and a 
sister of the Constable of Castile), we have accounts by Antonius, 
by Morales ; and a very curious one by Sir Kenelm Digby, of 
what he himself saw in the younger brother of the Constable, 
when he accompanied Charles I., when Prince of Wales, in his 
expedition into Spain, and to whom he appeals as a fellow- witness 
with himself. 

"There was a nobleman of great quality that I knew in Spain, the 
younger brother of the Constable of Castile, who was taught to heare the 

M 



178 DEAF AND DUMB. 

sounds of words with his eyes (if that expression may he permitted), 
This Spanish Lord was born deai'e, so deafe that if a gun were shot oir 
close by his eare he could not heare it, and consequently he was dumbe ; 
for not being able to heare the sound of words, he could never imitate nor 
understand them : The lovclinesse of his face, and especially the exceed- 
ing life and spiritfulnesse of his eyes, and the comlinesse of his person, 
and the whole composure of his body throughout, were pregnant signs 
of a well-tempered mind within. And therefore all that knew him la- 
mented much the want of meaues to cultivate it, and to embrue it with 
the notions, which it seemed to be capable of, in regard of itself, had it 
not been crossed by this unhappy accident, which to remedie physicians and 
chyrurgions had long employed their skill, but all in vaine. At the last 
there was a priest, who undertooke the teaching him to understand others 
when they spoke, and to speake himselfe that others might understand 
him. for which attempt at first he was laughed at, yet after some yeares 
he was looked upon as if he had wrought a miracle. In a word, after 
strange patience, constancie, and pains, he brought the young lord to 
speak as distinctly as any man whatsoever ; and to understand so perfect- 
ly what others said, that he would not lose a word in a whole dayes con- 
versation. I have often discoursed with the priest whilst I waited upon 
the Prince of Wales (now our gracious Sovereign) in Spain, and I doubt 
not but his Majesty remembreth all I have said of him, and much more: 
for his Majesty was very curious to observe, and enquire into the utmost 
of it. It is true, one great misbecomeingnesse he was apt to fall into, 
whilst he spoke : which was an uncertainty in the tone of his voyce, for 
not hearing the sound he made when he spoke, he could not steadily governe 
the pitch of his voyce, but it would be sometimes higher and sometimes lower, 
though, for the most part what he delivered together he ended in the same 
key as he began it. But when he had once suffered the passage of his voyce 
to close, at the opening it again, chance, or the measure of his earnestness 
to speak or reply, gave him his tone, which he was not capable of moderat- 
ing by such an artifice, as is recorded Caius Gracchus used, when passion 
in his orations to the people, drove out his voice with too great a vehe- 
mency or shrillnesse. He could discerne in another whether he spoke 
shrill or low , and he would repeat after any bodie any hard word what- 
soever, which the Prince tried often, not only in English, but by making 
some Welchmen that served his Iiighnesse speak words of their language, 
which he so perfectly ecchoed, that I confesse I wondered more at that 
than at all the rest, and his master himselfe would acknowledge that the 
rules of his art reached not to produce that effect with any certainty. 
And, therefore, concluded this in him must spring from other rules he 
had framed unto himselfe out of his own attentive observation ; which the 
advantages which nature had justly given him in the sharpnesse of senses 
to supply the want of this, endowed him with an ability and sagacity to 
do beyond any other man that had his hearing. He expressed it, surely, 
in a high measure by his so exact imitation of the AVelch pronunciation ; 
for that tongue (like the Hebrew) employeth much the guttural letters, 
and the motions of that part which frameth them cannot be seen or 
judged by the eye, otherwise than by the effect they may happily make 
by consent in the other parts of the mouth exposed to view. For the 
knowledge he had of what they said sprung from his observing the mo- 
tions they made, so that he could converse currently in the light, though 



DALGARNO. 179 

they he talked with whispered never so softly. And I have seen him at 
the distance of a large chamber's breadth say words after one, that I 
standing close by the speaker could not hear a syllable of. But if he 
were in the darke, or if one turned his face out of his sight he was capa- 
ble of nothing one said." — {Treatise of Bodies.) 

The prejudice was now dispelled, that the deaf and dumb were 
incapable of education ; and during the course of the seventeenth 
century, many examples are recorded of their successful instruc- 
tion without even the aid of a teacher experienced in the art. 

Though nothing can be clearer than the right of Spain to the 
original invention of this art in all its branches, we, however, 
find it claimed, at a much later period, and in the same year 
(1670), by Lafia, the Italian Jesuit, in his Prodromo ; and for 
Dr. John Wallis, Professor of Geometry in Oxford, in the Tran- 
sactions of the Royal Society of London. The precepts of the 
former are neither new nor important ; and the latter can only 
vindicate his originality by an ignorance of what had previously 
been effected. "Wallis appears to have long (that is, before the 
appearance of Dalgarno's work) applied himself mainly to the 
comparatively unimportant point of enabling the deaf to enun- 
ciate words. Without undervaluing the merit of his treatise on 
the nature and pronunciation of letters, in the introduction to his 
English grammar, or the success of his principles in enabling the 
deaf to speak— all this had been previously done by others with 
equal ability and success. The nature of letters, the organic mo- 
difications for the production of the various vocal sounds, had 
been investigated by Fabricius ab Aquapendente in his treatise 
De Locutione ; and thereafter with remarkable accuracy and 
minuteness by P. Montanus in his Account of a New Art called 
the. Art of Speech, published in Holland many years prior to the 
grammar of Dr. Wallis ; — w T hile Bonnet, in the work already 
mentioned, had, in the first book, treated "of the nature of letters 
and their pronunciation among different nations," and in the se- 
cond, " showed how the mute may be taught the figure and pro- 
nunciation of letters by manual demonstration, and the motion 
of the mouth and lips."— Wallis's originality can indeed hardly 
be maintained in relation even to English writers. 

To say nothing of Lord Bacon's recommendation of "the 
motions of the tongue, lips, throat, palate, &c, which go to the 
making up of the several letters, as a subject worthy of inquiry." 
John Bulwer had, in the year 1648, published his curious treat- 



180 DEAF AND DUMB. 

ise, entitled — " Philocophus, or the Deafe and Dumbe Man's 
Friend, exhibiting the philosophical verity of that subtile art, 
which may inable one with an observant eie, to heare what any 
man speaks by the moving of his lips. Upon the same ground, 
with the advantage of an historical exemplification, apparently 
proving, that a man borne deafe and dumbe, may be taught to 
heare the sounds of words ivith his eie, and thence learn to speak 
with his tongue. By J. B. sirnamed the Chirosopher. London, 
1.648." 

Bulwer appears to have been ignorant of Bonnet's book, but 
he records many remarkable oases, several within his own expe- 
rience, of what had been accomplished for the education of the 
deaf. He was the first also to recommend the institution of "an 
academy of the mute," and to notice the capacity which deaf 
persons usually possess of enjoying music through the medium 
of the teeth — a fact which has latterly been turned to excellent 
account, especially in Germany; and there principally by Father 
Robertson, a monk of the Scots College of Ratisbon, by whose 
exertions a new source of instruction and enjoyment has thus 
been opened up to those otherwise insensible to sounds. It is 
remarkable that Bulwer, who had previously written a work on 
" Chirologia, or the Natural Language of the Hand," and who 
had thence even obtained the surname of the Chirosopher, should 
have suggested nothing in regard to a method of speaking on the 
fingers ; and it is still more singular that his attention was not 
called to this device, as he himself has mentioned a remarkable 
case, in which it had been actually applied. " A pregnant 
example," he says "of the officious nature of the touch, in sup- 
plying the defect or temporall incapacity of the other senses, we 
have in one Master Babington, of Burntwood, in the county of 
Essex, an ingenious gentleman, who, through some sicknesse, 
becoming deaf, doth, notwithstanding, feele words, and, as if he 
had an eye in his finger, sees signes in the darke ; whose wife 
discourseth very perfectly with him by a strange way of arthro- 
logie, or alphabet, contrived on the joynts of his fingers, who, 
taking him by the hand in the night, can so discourse with him 
very exactly ; for he feeling the joynts which she toucheth for 
letters, by them collected into words, very readily conceives what 
she would suggest to him." (P. 106.) 

We pass over Holder's " Elements of Speech. An Essay of 
Inquiry into the Natural Production of Letters, with an Appendix 



DALGARNO. 181 

to instruct Persons Deaf and Dumb.;" and Sibscote's " Deaf and 
Dumb Man's Discourse,'''' which were published in the interval 
between Wallis's practical application of his method and the 
appearance of Dalgarno's book. Dalgarno, we believe, may 
claim the merit of having first exhibited, and that in its most 
perfect form, a finger alphabet. He makes no pretensions, how- 
ever, to the original conception of such a medium of communi- 
cation. . But the great and distinctive merit of his treatise is 
not so much, that it improved the mechanism of instruction, as 
that it corrected the errors of his predecessors, and pointed out 
the principles on which the art is founded, and by the observance 
of which alone it can be carried to perfection. As we first attempt 
to fix and communicate our notions by the aid of speech, it was 
a natural prejudice to believe that sounds were the necessary 
instrument of thought and its expression. The earlier instruct- 
ors of the deaf and dumb were thus led to direct their principal 
effort to the teaching their pupils to distinguish the different 
mechanical movements by which different sounds are produced, 
and to imitate these sounds by imitating the organic modification 
on which they depend. They did not consider that still there 
existed no sound for the deaf; that the signs to which they thus 
attached ideas were only perceptions of sight and feeling ; that 
these were, on the one hand, minute, ambiguous, fugitive, and, 
on the other, difficult ; and that it would be better to associate 
thought with a system of signs more easy to produce, and less 
liable to be mistaken. The honor of first educating the deaf and 
dumb in the general principles of grammar, and in primarily 
associating their thought with written instead of with spoken 
symbols, is generally claimed for the eighteenth century, France, 
and the Abbe de VEpee. All this was, however, fully demon- 
strated a century before in the forgotten treatise of our country^ 
man, as in a great measure also practiced by Pontius, the original 
inventor of the art, a century before Dalgarno. We are indebted, 
as we formerly observed, to Mr. Dugald Stewart for rescuing the 
name of Dalgarno from the oblivion into which it had fallen ; and 
the following quotation from that distinguished philosopher affords 
the most competent illustration of his merits : — 

" After having thus paid the tribute of my^incere respect to the enlight- 
ened and benevolent exertions of a celebrated foreigner (Sicard), I feel 
myself called on to lay hold of the only opportunity that may occur to me 
of rescuing from oblivion the name of a Scottish writer, whose merits have 



182 DEAF AND DUMB. 

.been strangely overlooked, both by his contemporaries and by his success- 
ors. The person I allude to is George Dalgarno, who, more than a hundred 
and thirty years ago, was led, by his own sagacity, to adopt, a priori, the 
same general conclusion concerning the education of the dumb, of which 
the experimental discovery, and the happy application, have, in our times, 
reflected such merited lustre on the name of Sicard. I mentioned Dal- 
garno formerly, in a note annexed to the first volume of the ' Philosophy 
of the Human Mind' as the author of a very ingenious tract, entitled 
' Ars Signorum,' 1 from which it appears indisputably that he was the pre- 
cursor of Bishop Wilkins in his speculations concerning a real. character 
and a philosophical language ; and it now appears to me equally clear, 
upon a further acquaintance with the short fragments which he has left 
behind him, that, if he did not lead the way to the attempt made by Dr. 
Wallis to teach the dumb to speak, he had conceived views with respect 
to the means of instructing them, far more profound and comprehensive 
than any we meet with in the works of that learned writer prior to the 
date of Dalgarno's publications. On his claims in these two instances, I 
forbear to enlarge at present ; but I can not deny myself the satisfaction 
of transcribing a few paragraphs in justification of what I have already 
stated with respect to the remarkable coincidence between some of his 
theoretical deductions, and the practical results of the French Academician. 
,: 'I conceive there might be successful addresses made to a dumb child, 
even in its cradle, when he begins risu cognoscere matrem, if the mother 
or nurse had but as nimble a hand, as commonly they have a tongue. Foi 
instance, I doubt not but the words hand, foot, dog, cat, hat, &c. written 
fair, and as often presented to the deaf child's eye, pointing from the words 
to the things, and vice versa, as the blind child hears them spoken, would 
be known and remembered as soon by the one as the other ; and as I 
think the eye to be as docile as the ear, so neither see I any reason but 
the hand might be made as tractable an organ as the tongue, and as soon 
brought to form, if not fair, at least legible characters, as the tongue to 
imitate and echo back articulate sounds.' ' The difficulties of learning to 
read on the common plan, are so great, that one may justly wonder how 
young ones come to get over them. Now, the deaf child, under his moth- 
er's tuition, passes securely by all these rocks and quicksands. The dis- 
tinction of letters, their names, their powers, their order, the dividing 
words into syllables, and of them again making words, to which may be 
added tone and accent — none of these puzzling niceties hinder his progress. 
It is true, after he had passed the discipline of the nursery, and comes to 
learn grammatically, then he must begin to learn to know letters written, 
by their figures, number, and order.' 

" The same author elsewhere observes, that ' the soul can exert her 
powers by the ministry of any of the senses ; and therefore, when she is 
deprived of her principal secretaries, the eye and ear, then she must be 
Contented with the service of her lackeys and scullions, the other senses ; 
which are no less true and faithful to their mistress than the eye and the 
ear, but not so quick for dispatch.' 

" I shall only add one other sentence, from which my readers will be 
enabled, without any comment of mine, to perceive with what sagacity 
and success this very original thinker had anticipated some of the most 
refined experimental conclusions of a more enlightened age. 

" ' My design is not to give a methodical system of grammatical rules, 



DALGARNO. 183 

but only such general directions, whereby an industrious tutor may bring 
his deaf pupil to the vulgar use and otl of a language, that so he may be 
the more capable of receiving instruction in the dibn, from the rules of 
grammar, when his judgment is ripe for that study ; or, more plainly, I 
intend to bring the way of teaching a deaf man to read and write, as near 
as possible to that of teaching young ones to speak and understand theii 
mother-tongue.' 

" In prosecution of this general idea, he has treated, in one very short 
chapter, of A Deaf Man's Dictionary, and in another of A. Gramma? 
for Deaf Persons, both of them containing (under the disadvantages of 
a style uncommonly pedantic and quaint) a variety of precious hints, from 
which, if I do not deceive myself, useful practical lights might be derived, 
not only by such as may undertake the instruction of such pupils, as 
Mitchell or Massieu, but by all who have any concern in the tuition of 
children during the first stage of their education. 

" That Dalgarno's suggestions with respect to the education of the 
dumb, were not altogether useless to Dr. Wallis, will, I think, be readily 
admitted by those who take the trouble to compare his letter to Mr. Bev- 
erley (published eighteen years after Dalgarno's treatise) with his Trac- 
tatus de Loquela, published in 1653. In this letter, some valuable re- 
marks are to be found on the method of leading the dumb to the signifi- 
cation of words ; and yet the name of Dalgarno is not once mentioned to 
his correspondent." 

We may add, that Mr. Stewart is far more lenient than Dr. 
Wallis' disingenuity merited, Wallis, in his letter to Mr. Bever- 
ley, has plundered Darlgarno, even to his finger alphabet. It is 
no excuse, though it may in part account for the omission of Dal- 
garno's name, that Darlgarno, while he made little account in 
general of the teaching of the deaf and dumb to speak, had, in 
his chapter on the subject, passed over in total silence the very 
remarkable exploits in this department of "the learned and my 
worthy friend Dr. Wallis," as he elsewhere styles him. On this 
subject, indeed, it seems to have been fated, that every writer 
should either be ignorant of, or should ignore, his predecessors. 
Bulwer, Lana, and Wallis, each professed himself original ; Dal- 
garno entitles his Didascalocophus " the first (for what the author 
knows) that had been published on the subject ;" and Amman, 
whose Stcrdus Loquens appeared only in 1692, makes solemn 
oath, "that he had found no vestige of a similar attempt in any 
previous writer." 

The length to which these observations have run on the Philo- 
cophus, would preclude our entering on the subject of the other 
treatise — the Ars Signorum, were this not otherwise impossible 
within the limits of the present notice. But indeed the most 
general statement of the problem of an universal character, and 



184 DEAF AND DUMB. 

of the various attempts made for its solution, could hardly be 
comprised within the longest article. At the same time, regard- 
ing as we do the plan of a philosophical language, as a curious 
theoretical idea, but one which can never be practically realized, 
our interest in the several essays is principally limited to the 
ingenuity manifested by the authors, and to the minor philosophi- 
cal truths incidentally developed in the course of these discussions. 
Of such, the treatise of Dalgarno is not barren ; but that which 
principally struck us, is his remarkable anticipation, on specula- 
tive grounds, a priori, of what has been now articulately proved, 
a posteriori, by the Dutch philologers and Home Tooke (to say 
nothing of the ancients) — that the parts of speech are all reduci- 
ble to the noun and verb, or to the noun alone. 



VI.-IDEALISM. 

WITH REFERENCE TO THE SCHEME OF ARTHUR 

COLLIER. 



(April, 1839.) 

1. Metaphysical Tracts by English Philosophers of the Eighteenth 
Century. Prepared for the Press by the late Rev. Samuel 
Parr, D.D. 8vo. London : 1837. 

2. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev Arthur Collier ', 
M.A., Rector of Langford Magna, in the County of Wilts. 
From A.D. 1704, to A.D. 1732. With some Account of his 
Family. By Robert Benson, M.A. 8vo. London : 1837 

We deem it our duty to call attention to these publications : 
for in themselves they are eminently deserving of the notice of 
the few who in this country take an interest in these higher 
speculations to which, in other countries, the name of Philosophy 
is exclusively conceded; and, at the same time, they have not 
been ushered into the world with those adventitious recommenda- 
tions which might secure their intrinsic merit against neglect. 

The fortune of the first is curious. — It is known to those who 
have made an active study of philosophy and its history, that 
there are many philosophical treatises written by English authors 
— in whole or in part of great value, but, at the same time, of 
extreme rarity. Of these, the rarest are, in fact, frequently the 
most original : for precisely in proportion as an author is in ad- 
vance of his age, is it likely that his works will be neglected ; and 
the neglect of contemporaries in general consigns a book — espe- 
cially a small book — if not protected by accidental concomitants, 
at once to the tobacconist or tallow-chandler. This is more par- 
ticularly the case with pamphlets, philosophical, and at the same 
time polemical. Of these we are acquainted with some, extant 
perhaps only in one or two copies, which display a metaphysical 



186 IDEALISM. 

talent unappreciated in a former age, but which would command 
the admiration of the present. N.?y, even of English philosophers 
of the very highest note (strange to say!) there are now actually 
lying unknown to their editors, biographers, and fellow-metaphy- 
sicians, published treatises, of the highest interest and import- 
ance ; as of Cudworth, Berkeley, Collins, &c] 

"We have often, therefore, thought that, were there with us a 
public disposed to indemnify the cost of such a publication, a col- 
lection, partly of treatises, partly of extracts from treatises, by 
English metaphysical writers, of rarity and merit, would be one 
of no inconsiderable importance. In any other country than 
Britain, such a publication would be of no risk or difficulty. 
Almost every nation of Europe, except our own, has, in fact, at 
present similar collections in progress — only incomparably more 
ambitious. Among others, there are in Germany the Corpus 
Philosophorum, by Grfroerer ; in France, the Bibliotheque Philo- 
sophique des Temps Modernes, by Bouillet and Grarnier ; and 
in Italy, the Collezione de 1 Classici Metajisici, &c. Nay, in this 
country itself, we have publishing societies for every department 
of forgotten literature — except Philosophy. 

But in Britain, which does not even possess an annotated edi- 
tion of Locke — in England, where the Universities teach the 
little philosophy they still nominally attempt, like the catechism, 
by rote, what encouragement could such an enterprise obtain ? 
It did not, therefore, surprise us, when we learnt that the pub- 
lisher of the two works under review — when he essayed what, 
in the language of "tke trade" is called " to subscribe" The 
Metaphysical Tracts, found his brother booksellers indisposed to 
venture even on a single copy. — Now, what was the work which 
our literary purveyors thus eschewed as wormwood to British 
taste ? 

The late Dr. Parr, whose erudition was as unexclusive as pro- 
found, had, many years previous to his death, formed the plan of 
reprinting a series of the rarer metaphysical treatises, of English 
authorship, which his remarkable library contained. With this 
view, he had actually thrown off a small impression of five such 
tracts, with an abridgment of a sixth; but as these probably 
formed only a part of his intended collection, which, at the same 
time it is known he meant to have prefaced by an introduction, 
containing, among other matters, an historical disquisition on 
Idealism, with special reference to the philosophy of Collier, the 



ENGLISH INDIFFERENCE TO PHILOSOPHY. 187 

publication was from time to time delayed, until its completion 
was finally frustrated by his death. When his library was subse- 
quently sold, the impression of the six treatises was purchased 
by Mr. Lumley, a respectable London bookseller ; and by him 
has recently been published under the title which stands as Num- 
ber First at the head of this article. 

The treatises reprinted in this collection are the following : 

' 1 . Claris Universalis ; or a netv Inquiry after Truth : being a 
demonstration of the non-existence or impossibility of an external ivorld. 
By Arthur Collier, Rector of Langford Magna, near Sarum. London : 
1713. 

2. A Specimen of True Philosophy ; in a discourse on Genesis, the 
first chapter and the first verse. By Arthur Collier, Rector of Langford 
Magna, near Sarum, Wilts. Not improper to be bound up with his 
Clavis Universalis. Sarum : 1730. 

3. (An abridgement, by Dr. Parr, of the doctrines maintained by Col- 
lier in his) Logology, or Treatise on the Logos, in seven sermons on John 1. 
verses 1, 2, 3, 14, together with an Appendix on the same subject. 1732. 

4. Conjectures qucedam de Sensu, Motu, et Idearum generatione. 
(This was first published by David Hartley as an appendix to his Epistol- 
ary Dissertation, De Lithontriptico a J. Stephens nuper invento (Leyden, 
1741, Bath, 1746); and contains the principles of that psychological 
theory which he afterward so fully developed in his observations on Man.) 
I 5. An Inquiry into the Origin of the Human Appetites and Affec- 
tions, shoiving how each arises from Association, with an account of 
the entrance of Moral Evil into the world. To which are added some 
remarks on the independent scheme which deduces all obligation on God's 
part and man's from certain abstract relations, truth, &c. Written for 
the use of the young gentlemen at the Universities. Lincoln : 1747. 
(The author is yet unknown.) 

6. Man in quest of himself ; or a defense of the Individuality of the 
Human Mind, or Self Occasioned by some remarks in the Monthly 
Review for July, 1763, on a note in Search's Freewill. By Cuthbert 
Comment, Gent. London : 1763. (The author of this is Search himself, 
that is, Mr. Abraham Tucker.)" 

These tracts are undoubtedly well worthy of notice ; but to 
the first — the Clavis Universalis of Collier — as by far the most 
interesting and important, we shall at present confine the few 
observations which we can afford space to make. 1 

This treatise is in fact one not a little remarkable in the history 
of philosophy ; for to Collier along with Berkeley is due the honor 
of having first explicitly maintained a theory of Absolute Ideal- 
ism ; and the Clavis is the work in which that theory is devel- 

1 lit never rains but it pours. Collier's Clavis was subsequently reprinted in a 
very handsome form, by a literary association in Edinburgh. Would that the books 
wanting reimpression, were first dealt with !] 



188 IDEALISM. 

oped. The fortune of this treatise, especially in its own country 
has been very different from its deserts. Though the negation 
of an external world had been incidentally advanced by Berkeley 
in his Principles of Human Knowledge some three years prior to the 
appearance of the Clavis Universalis, with which the publication 
of his Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous was simultaneous ; 
it is certain that Collier was not only wholly unacquainted with 
Berkeley's speculations, but had delayed promulgating his opinion 
till after a ten years' meditation. Both philosophers are thus 
equally original. They are also nearly on a level in scientific talent ; 
for, comparing the treatise of Collier with the writings of Berkeley, 
we find it little inferior in metaphysical acuteness or force of 
reasoning, however deficient it may be in the graces of composi- 
tion, and the variety of illustration, by which the works of his 
more accomplished rival are distinguished. But how dispropor- 
tioned to their relative merits has been the reputation of the two 
philosophers ! While Berkeley's became a name memorable 
throughout Europe, that of Collier was utterly forgotten : — it 
appears in no British biography ; and is not found even on the 
list of local authors in the elaborate history of the county where 
he was born, and of the parish where he was hereditary Rector ! 
Indeed, but for the notice of the Clavis by Dr. Reid (who appears 
to have stumbled on it in the College Library of Glasgow), it is 
probable that the name of Collier would have remained in his 
own country absolutely unknown — until, perhaps, our attention 
might have been called to his remarkable writings, by the consid- 
eration they had by accident obtained from the philosophers of 
other countries. In England the Clavis Universalis was printed, 
but there it can hardly be said to have been published ; for it 
there never attracted the slightest observation ; and of the copies 
now known to be extant of the original edition, 

" mnncrus viz est tolidem, quot 

Thcbarum porta: vcl divilis ostia Nili." 

The public libraries of Oxford and Cambridge, as Mr. Benson 
observes, do not possess a single copy. There are, however, two 
in Edinburgh; and in G-lasgow, as we have noticed, there is an- 
other. 

The only country in which the Clavis can truly be said to have 
been hitherto published is Germany. 

In the sixth supplemental volume of the Acta Eruditorum 
(1717) there is a copious and able abstractof its contents. Through 



FATE OF THE CLAVIS UNIVERSALIS. 189 

this abridgement the speculations of Collier became known — par- 
ticularly to the German philosophers ; and we recollect to have 
seen them quoted, among others, by Wolf and Biljinger. 

In 1756 the work was, however, translated, without retrench- 
ment, into German, by Professor Eschenbach of Rostock, along 
with Berkeley's Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. These 
two treatises constitute his " Collection of the most distinguished 
Writers who deny the reality of their own body and of the whole 
corporeal world" — treatises which he accompanied with "Coun- 
ter observations, and an Appendix, in which the existence of 
matter is demonstrated :" These are of considerable value. [I 
have spoken of them in Stewart's Dissertation, Note SS.] Speak- 
ing of Collier's treatise, the translator tells us : — " If any book 
ever cost me trouble to obtain it, the Clavis is that book. Every 
exertion was fruitless. At length, an esteemed friend, Mr. J. 
Selk, candidate of theology in Dantzic, sent me the work, after 

I had abandoned all hope of ever being able to procure it 

The preface is wanting in the copy thus obtained — a proof that 
it was rummaged, with difficulty, out of some old book magazine. 
It has not, therefore, been in my power to present it to the curious 
reader, but I trust the loss may not be of any great importance." 
— In regard to the preface, Dr. Eschenbach is, however, mis- 
taken ; the original has none. 

By this translation, which has now itself become rare, the 
work was rendered fully accessible in Germany ; and the philos- 
ophers of that country did not fail to accord to its author the 
honor due to his metaphysical talent and originality. The best 
comparative view of the kindred doctrines of Collier and Berkeley 
is indeed given by Tennemann (xi. 399, sq.); whose meritorious 
History of Philosophy, we may observe, does justice to more than 
one English thinker, whose works, and even whose name, are in 
his own country as if they had never been ! 

Dr. Reid's notice of the Clavis attracted the attention of Mr. 
Dugald Stewart and of Dr. Parr to the work; and to the 
nominal celebrity which, through them, its author has thus 
tardily attained, even in Britain, are we indebted for Mr. Ben- 
son's interesting Memoirs of the Life and Writing's of Arthur 
Collier: forming the second of the two publications prefixed to 
this article. What was his inducement and what his means for 
the execution of this task, the biographer thus informs us. 



190 IDEALISM. 

Arthur Collier was born in 1680. He was the son of Arthur 
Collier, Rector of Langford-Magna, in the neighborhood of Salis- 
bury — a living, the advowson of which had for about a century 
been in possession of the family, and of which his great-grand- 
father, grandfather, father, and himself, were successively incum- 
bents. With his younger brother, William, who was also des- 
tined for the Church, and who obtained an adjoining benefice, he 
received his earlier education in the grammar-school of Salisbury. 
In 1697 he was entered of Pembroke College, Oxford ; but in 
the following year, when his brother joined him at the University, 
they both became members of Balliol. His father having died 
in 1697, the family living was held by a substitute until 1704, 
when Arthur, having taken priest's orders, was inducted into the 
Rectory, on the presentation of his mother. In 1707 he married 
a niece of Sir Stephen Fox ; and died in 1732, leaving his wife, 
with two sons and two daughters, in embarrassed circumstances. 
Of the sons : — Arthur became a civilian of some note at the Com- 
mons ; and Charles rose in the army to the rank of Colonel. Of 
the daughters : — Jane was the clever authoress of the Art of In- 
geniously Tormenting ; and Mary obtained some celebrity from 
having accompanied Fielding, as his wife's friend, in the voyage 
which he made in quest of health to Lisbon. Collier's family is 
now believed to be extinct. 

Besides the Clavis Universalis (1713), The Specimen of True 
Philosophy (1730), and the Logology (1732), Collier was the 
author of two published Sermons on controversial points, which 
have not been recovered. Of his manuscript works the remains' 
are still considerable, but it is probable that the greater propor- 
tion has perished. Our author was hardly less independent in 
his religious, than in his philosophical speculations. In the latter 
he was an Idealist ; in the former, an Arian (like Clarke) — an 
Apollinarian — and a High Churchman, on grounds which high 
churchmen could not understand. Of Collier as a parish priest 
and a theologian, Mr. Benson supplies us with much interesting 
information. But it is only as a metaphysician that we at present 
consider him ; and in this respect the Memoirs form a valuable 
supplement to the Clavis. Besides a series of letters in exposi- 
tion of his philosophical system, they afford us, what is even more 
important, an insight into the course of study by which Collier 
was led to his conclusion. With philosophical literature he does 
not appear to have been at all extensively conversant. His writ- 



COLLIER'S BIOGRAPHY. 191 

ings betray no intimate acquaintance with the works of the great 
thinkers of antiquity ; and the compends of the German Scheib- 
lerus and of the Scottish Baronius, apparently supplied him with 
all that he knew of the Metaphysic of the Schools. Locke is 
never once alluded to. Descartes and Mallebranche, and his 
neighbor Mr. Norris, were the philosophers whom he seems prin- 
cipally to have studied ; and their works, taken by themselves, 
were precisely those best adapted to conduct an untrammeled 
mind of originality and boldness to the result at which he actually 
arrived. 

"Without entering on any general consideration of the doctrine 
of Idealism, or attempting a regular analysis of the argument of 
Collier, we hazard a few remarks on that theory — -simply with 
the view of calling attention to some of the peculiar merits of our 
author. 

Mankind in general believe that an external world exists, only 
because they believe that they immediately know it as existent. 
As they believe that they themselves exist because conscious of a 
self or ego ; so they believe that something different from them- 
selves exists, because they believe that they are also conscious 
of this not-self or non-ego. 

In the first place, then, it is self-evident, that the existence of 
the external world can not be doubted, if we admit that we do, as 
we naturally believe we do — know it immediately as existent. 
If the fact of the knowledge be allowed, the fact of the existence 
can not be gainsaid. The former involves the latter. 

But, in the second place, it is hardly less manifest, that if our 
natural belief in the knowledge of the existence of an external 
world be disallowed as false, that our natural belief in the exist- 
ence of such a world can no longer be founded on as true. Yet, 
marvelous to say, this has been very generally done. 

For reasons to which we can not at present advert, it has been 
almost universally denied by philosophers, that in sensitive per- 
ception we are conscious of any external reality. On the con- 
trary, they have maintained, with singular unanimity, that what 
we are immediately cognitive of in that act, is only an ideal ob- 
ject in the mind itself. In so far as they agree in holding this 
opinion, philosophers may be called Idealists in contrast to man- 
kind in general, and a few stray speculators who may be called 
Realists — Natural Realists. 

In regard to the relation or import of this ideal object, philoso- 



192 IDEALISM. 

phers are divided ; and this division constitutes two great and 
opposing opinions in philosophy. On the one hand, the majority 
have maintained that the ideal object of which the mind is con- 
scious, is vicarious or representative of a real object, unknown 
immediately, or as existing, and known only mediately through 
this its ideal substitute. These philosophers, thus holding the 
existence of an external world — a world, however, unknown in 
itself, and therefore asserted only as an hypothesis, may be appro- 
priately styled Cosmothetic Idealists — Hypothetical ox Assumptive 
Realists. On the other hand, a minority maintain, that the ideal 
object has no external prototype ; and they accordingly deny the 
existence of any external world. These may be denominated the 
Absolute Idealists. 

Bach of these great genera of Idealists is, however, divided 
and subdivided into various subordinate species. 

The Cosmothetic Idealists fall primarily into tivo classes, inas- 
much as some view the ideal or representative object to be a 
tertium quid different from the percipient mind as from the 
represented object ; while others regard it as only a modification 
of the mind itself — as only the percipient act considered as repre- 
sentative of, or relative to, the supposed external reality. The 
former of these classes is again variously subdivided, according 
as theories may differ in regard to the nature and origin of the 
vicarious object ; as whether it be material or immaterial — whe- 
ther it come from without or rise from within — whether it ema- 
nate from the external reality or from a higher source — whether 
it be infused by God or other hyperphysical intelligences, or 
whether it be a representation in the Deity himself — whether it 
be innate, or whether it be produced by the mind, on occasion 
of the presence of the material object within the sphere of sense, 
&c. &c. 

Of Absolute Idealism only two principal species are possible ; 
at least, only two have been actually manifested in the history of 
philosophy ; — the Theistic and the Egoistic. The former sup- 
poses that the Deity presents to the mind the appearances which 
we are determined to mistake for an external world ; the latter 
supposes that these appearances are manifested to consciousness, 
in conformity to certain unknown laws, by the mind itself. The 
Theistic Idealism is again subdivided into three; according as 
(rod is supposed to exhibit the phenomena in tuiestion in his own 
substance — to infuse into the percipient mind representative en- 



IDEALISM IN GENERAL. 193 

titles different from its own modification — or to determine the ego 
itself to an illusive representation of the non-ego. 1 

Now it is easily shown, that if the doctrine of Natural Realism 
be abandoned — -if it be admitted, or proved, that we are deceived 
in our belief of an immediate knowledge of aught beyond the 
mind ; then Absolute Idealism is a conclusion philosophically 
inevitable, the assumption of an external world being now an 
assumption which no necessity legitimates, and which is there- 
fore philosophically inadmissible. On the law of parsimony it 
must be presumed null. 

It is, however, historically true, that Natural Realism had been 
long abandoned by philosophers for Cosmothetic Idealism, before 
the grounds on which this latter doctrine rests were shown to be 
unsound. These grounds are principally the following : 

1.) — In the first place, the natural belief in the existence of an 
external world was allowed to operate even when the natural 
belief of our immediate knowledge of such a world was argued 
to be false. It might be thought that philosophers, when tbey 
maintained that one original belief was illusive, would not con- 
tend that another was veracious — -still less that they would as- 
sume, as true, a belief which existed only as the result of a belief 
which they assumed to be false. But this they did. The Cos- 
mothetic Idealists, all deny the validity of our natural belief in 
our knowledge of the existence of external things ; but we find 
the majority of them, at the same time, maintaining that such 
existence must be admitted on the authority of our natural belief 
of its reality. And yet, the latter belief exists only in and through 
the former; and if the former be held false, it is, therefore, of 
all absurdities the greatest to view the latter as true. Thus 
Descartes, after arguing that mankind are universally deluded 
in their conviction that they have any immediate knowledge of 
aught beyond the modifications of their own minds ; again argues 
that the existence of an external world must be admitted — 
because, if it do not exist, Grod deceives, in impressing on us a 
belief in its reality ; but Grod is no deceiver ; therefore, &c. This 
reasoning is either good for nothing, or good for more than Des- 
cartes intended. For, on the one hand, if Grod be no deceiver, 
he did not deceive us in our natural belief that we knew some- 

1 [For a more detailed view of these distinctions, see Diss, on Reid, pp. 816-819 j 
Compare also above, pp. 61, sj.] 

N 



194 IDEALISM. 

thing more than the mere modes of self; but then the funda« 
mental position of the Cartesian philosophy is disproved : and 
if, on the other hand, this position be admitted, (rod is thereby 
confessed to be a deceiver, who, having deluded us in the belief 
on which our belief of an external world is founded, can not be 
consistently supposed not to delude us in this belief itself. Such 
melancholy reasoning is, however, from Descartes to Dr. Brown, 
the favorite logic by which the Cosmothetic Idealists in general 
attempt to resist the conclusion of the Absolute Idealists. But 
on this ground there is no tenable medium between Natural 
Realism and Absolute Idealism. 

It is curious to notice the different views, which Berkeley and 
Collier, our two Absolute Idealists, and which Dr. Samuel Clarke 
the acutest of the Hypothetical Realists with whom they both 
came in contact, took of this principle. 

Clarke was, apparently too sagacious a metaphysician not to 
see that the proof of the reality of an external world reposed 
mainly on our natural belief of its reality ; and at the same time 
that this natural belief could not be pleaded in favor of his hypo- 
thesis by the Cosmothetic Idealist. He- was himself conscious, 
that his philosophy afforded him no arms against the reasoning 
of the Absolute Idealist ; whose inference he was, however, in- 
clined neither to admit, nor able to show why he should not. 
Whiston, in his Memoirs, speaking of Berkeley and his Idealism, 
says : — " He was pleased to send Dr. Clarke and myself, each of 
us, a book. After we had both perused it, I went to Dr. Clarke 
and discoursed with him about it to this effect: — That I, being 
not a metaphysician, was not able to answer Mr. Berkeley's subtle 
premises, though I did not at all believe his absurd conclusion. 
I, therefore, desired that he, who was deep in such subtilities, 
but did not appear to believe Mr. Berkeley's conclusions, would 
answer him ; ivhich task he declined." Many years after this, 
as we are told in the Life of Bishop Berkeley, prefixed to his 
works : — {i There was, at Mr. Addison's instance, a meeting of 
Drs. Clarke and Berkeley to discuss this speculative point ; and 
great hopes were entertained from the conference. The parties, 
however, separated without being able to come to any agreement. 
Dr. Berkeley declared himself not well satisfied with the conduct 
of his antagonist on the occasion, who, though he could not an- 
sioer, had not candor enough to own himself convinced." 

Mr. Benson affords us a curious anecdote to the same effect in 



IDEALISM IN GENERAL. 195 

a letter of Collier to Clarke. From it we learn— that when 
Collier originally presented his Clavis to the Doctor, through a 
friend, on reading the title, Clarke good-humoredly said : — " Poor 
gentleman ! I pity him. He would be a philosopher, but has 
chosen a strange task ; for he can neither prove his point himself 
nor can the contrary be proved against him." 

In regard to the two Idealists themselves, each dealt with this 
ground of argument in a very different way ; and it must be 
confessed that in this respect Collier is favorably contrasted with 
Berkeley.- — Berkeley attempts to enlist the natural belief of 
mankind in his favor against the Hypothetical Realism of the 
philosophers. It is true, natural belief is opposed to scientific 
opinion. Mankind are not, however, as Berkeley reports, Ideal- 
ists. In this he even contradicts himself; for, if they be, in 
truth of his opinion, why does he dispute so anxiously, so learn- 
edly against tham? — Collier, on the contrary, consistently rejects 
all appeal to the common sense of mankind. The motto of his 
work, from Mallebranche, is the watchword of his philosophy :- — 
" Vulgi assensus et approbatio circa materiam difficilem, est cer- 
ium ar gum entum falsi tatis istius opinionis cui assentitur '." And 
in his answer to the Cartesian argument for the reality of matter, 
from " that strong and natural inclination which all men have 
to believe in an external world;" he shrewdly remarks on the 
inconsistency of such a reasoning at such hands : — " Strange ! 
That a person of Mr. Descartes' sagacity should be found in so 
plain and palpable an oversight ; and that the late ingenious Mr. 
Norris should be found treading in the same track, and that too 
upon a solemn and particular disquisition of this matter. That 
while, on the one hand, they contend against the common inclina- 
tion or prejudice of mankind, that the visible world is not ex- 
ternal, they should yet appeal to this same common inclination 
for the truth or being of an external world, which on their prin- 
ciples must be said to be invisible ; and for which therefore (they 
must needs have known if they had considered it), there neither 
is, nor can be, any kind of inclination." (P. 81.) 

2.) — In the second place, it was very generally assumed in 
antiquity, and during the middle ages, that an external world 
was a supposition necessary to render possible the fact of our 
sensitive cognition. The philosophers who held, that the imme- 
diate object of perception was an emanation from an outer reality, 
and that the hypothesis of the latter was requisite to account for 



196 IDEALISM. 

the phenomenon of the former — their theory involved the exist- 
ence of an external world as its condition. But from the moment 
that the necessity of this condition was abandoned, and this was 
done by many even of the scholastic philosophers ; — from the 
moment that sensible species or the vicarious objects in percep- 
tion were admitted to be derivable from other sources than the 
external objects themselves, as from Gor.l, or from the mind it- 
self: from that moment we must look for other reasons than the 
preceding, to account for the remarkable fact, that it was not 
until after the commencement of the eighteenth century that a 
doctrine of Absolute Idealism was, without communication, con- 
temporaneously promulgated by Berkeley and Collier. 

3.) — In explanation of this fact, we must refer to a third 
ground, which has been wholly overlooked by the historians of 
philosophy ; but which it is necessary to take into account, would 
we explain how so obvious a conclusion as the negation of the 
existence of an outer world, on the negation of our immediate 
knowledge of its existence, should not have been drawn by so 
acute a race of speculators as the philosophers of the middle ages, 
to say nothing of the great philosophers of a more recent epoch. 
This ground is : — That the doctrine of Idealism is incompatible 
with the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. It is a very erro- 
neous statement of Reid, in which, however, he errs only in com- 
mon with other philosophers, that "during the reign of the Peri- 
patetic doctrine, we find no appearance of skepticism about the 
existence of matter." On the contrary, during the dominance of 
the scholastic philosophy, we find that the possibility of the non- 
existence of matter was contemplated ; nay, that the reasons in 
support of this supposition were expounded in all their cogency. 
We do not, however, find the conclusion founded on these reasons 
formally professed. And why ? Because this conclusion, though 
philosophically proved, was theologically disproved : and such 
disproof was during the middle ages sufficient to prevent the 
overt recognition of any speculative doctrine ; for with all its 
ingenuity and boldness, philosophy during these ages was con- 
fessedly in the service of the church — it was always Philosphia 
ancillans Theologian. And this because the service was volun- 
tary ; a thralldom indeed of love. Now, if the reality of matter 
were denied, there would, in general, be denied the reality of 
Christ's incarnation; and in particular the transubstantiation 
into his body of the elements of bread and wine. There were 



CATHOLICISM INCONSISTENT WITH IDEALISM. 197 

other theological reasons indeed, and these not without their 
weight ; but this was, perhaps, the only one insuperable to a 
Catholic. 

We find the influence of this reason at work in very ancient 
times. It was employed by the earlier Fathers, and more espe- 
cially in opposition to Marcion's doctrine of the merely phenome- 
nal incarnation of our Saviour. — " Non licet" (says Tertullian in 
his book De Anima, speaking of the evidence of sense — " non 
licet nobis in dubium sensus istus revocare, ne et in Christo de 
fide eorum deliberetur : ne forte dicatur, quod falso Satanam pro- 
spectant de cselo prsecipitatum ; aut falso vocem Patris audierit 
de ipso testificatam ; aut deceptus sit cum Petri socrum tetegrit. 
Sic et Marcion phantasma eum maluit credere, totius cor- 
poris in illo dedignatus veritatem." (Cap. xvii.) And in his 
book, Adversus Marcionem : — " Ideo Christus nonerat quod vide- 
batur, et quod erat mentiebatur ; caro, nee caro ; homo, nee 
homo : proinde Deus Christus, nee Deus ; cur enim non etiam 
Dei phantasma portaverit ? An credam ei de interiore substantiaj 
qui sit de exteriore frustratus? Q,uomodo verax habebitur in 
occulto, tam fallax repertus in aperto ? . . . Jam nunc quum men- 
dacium deprehenditur Christus caro ; sequitur ut omnia quse per 
carnem Christi gesta sunt, mendacio gesta sint — congressus, con- 
tactus, convictus, ipsee quoque virtutes. Si enim tangendo ali- 
quem, liberavit a vitio, non potest vere actum credi, sine corporis 
ipsius veritate. Nihil solidum ab inani, nihil plenum a vacuo 
perfici licet. Putativus habitus, putativus actus ; imaginarius 
operator, imaginariae operse." (Lib. iii. c. 8.) — In like manner, 
St. Augustin, among many other passages : — " Si phantasma 
fuit corpus Christi, fefellit Christus ; et si fefellit, Veritas non 
est. Est autem Veritas Christus ; non igitur phantasma fuit 
corpus ejus." {Liber De Ixxxiii. Qucestionibus, qu. 14.) — And 
so many others. 

The repugnancy of the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation 
with the surrender of a substantial prototype of the species pre- 
sented to our sensible perceptions, was, however, more fully and 
precisely signalized by the Schoolmen ; as may be seen in the 
polemic waged principally on the great arena of scholastic subtil- 
ity — the commentaries on the four books of the Sentences of 
Peter Lombard. In their commentaries on the first book, especi- 
ally, will be found abundant speculation of an idealistic tendenoy. 



198 IDEALISM. 

The question is almost regularly mooted : — May not God pre* 
serve the species (the ideas of a more modern philosophy) before 
the mind, the external reality represented being' destroyed ? — May 
not God, in fact, object to the sense the species representing an 
external world, that world, in reality, not existing? To these 
questions the answer is, always in the first instance, affirmative. 
Why then, the possibility, the probability even, being admitted, 
was the fact denied. Philosophically orthodox, it was theologic- 
ally heretical ; and their principal argument for the rejection is, 
that on such hypothesis, the doctrine of a transubstantiated 
eucharist becomes untenable. A change is not — can not be — 
(spiritually) real. 

Such was the special reason, why many of the acuter School- 
men did not follow out their general argument, to the express 
negation of matter ; and such also was the only reason, to say 
nothing of other Cartesians, why Mallebranche deformed the 
simplicity of his peculiar theory with such an assumptive hors 
d?ceuvre, as an unknown and otiose universe of matter. It is, 
indeed, but justice to that great philosopher to say — that if the 
incumbrance with which, as a Catholic, he was obliged to burden 
it, be thrown off his theory, that theory becomes one of Absolute 
Idealism ; and that, in fact, all the principal arguments in sup- 
port of such a scheme are found fully developed in his immortal 
Inquiry after Truth. This Mallebranche well knew ; and know- 
ing it, we can easily understand, how Berkeley's interview with 
him ended as it did. 1 

Mallebranche thus left little for his Protestant successors to do. 
They had only to omit the Catholic excrescence ; the reasons vin- 
dicating this omission they found collected and marshalled to their 
hand. That Idealism was the legitimate issue of the Malle- 



1 [I can not, however, concur in the praise of novelty and invention, which has 
always been conceded to the central theory of Mallebranche. His " Vision of all things 
in Ike Deity" is, as it appears to me, simply a transference to man in the flesh, to the 
Viator, of that mode of cognition, maintained by many of the older Catholic divines, 
in explanation of how the Saints, as disembodied spirits, can be aware of human 
invocations, and, in general, of what passes upon earth. " They ■perceive,'''' it is said, 
"all things in God." So that, in truth, the philosophical theory of Mallebranche, is 
nothing but the extension of a theological hypothesis, long common in the schools ; 
and with scholastic speculations, Mallebranche was even intimately acquainted. This 
hypothesis I had once occasion to express : 

" Quidquid, in his tcnebris vita, tc carne latebat, 
Nunc legis in magno cuncta, beate, Deo."J 



LOCKE'S IDEALISM. 199 

branchian doctrine, was at once seen by those competent to meta- 
physical reasoning. This was signalized, in general, by Bayle, 
and, what has not Jaeen hitherto noticed, by Locke. 1 It was, 



1 Compare Locke's Examination of P. Mallear amUe's Opinion (§ 20.) 

When on this subject, we may clear up a point connected therewith, of some inter- 
est, in relation to Locke and Newton, and which has engaged the attention of Dr. 
Reid and Mr. Dugald Stewart. 

Reid, who has overlooked the passage of Locke just referred to, says, in deducing 
the history of the Berkeleian Idealism, and after speaking of Mallebranche's opinion: 
" It may seem strange that Locke, who wrote so much about ideas, should not see 
those consequences which Berkeley thought so obviously deducible from that doctrine. 

There is, indeed, a single passage in Locke's essay, which may lead one to 

conjecture that he had a glimpse of that system which Berkeley afterward advanced, 
but thought proper to suppress it within his own breast. The passage is in Book IV., 
c. 10, where, having proved the existence of an eternal, intelligent mind, he comes to 
answer those who conceive that matter also must be eternal, because we can not con- 
ceive how it could be made out of nothing ; and, having observed that the creation of 
mind requires no less power than the creation of matter, he adds what follows : ' Nay, 
possibly, if we could emancipate ourselves from vulgar notions, and raise our thoughts, 
as far as they would reach, to a closer contemplation of things, we might be able to 
aim at some dim and seeming conception, how matter might at first be made and begin 
to exist, by the power of that eternal first Being ; but to give beginning and being to 
a spirit, would be found a more inconceivable effect of omnipotent power. But this 
being what would, perhaps, lead us too far from the notions on which the philosophy 
now in the world is built, it would not be pardonable to deviate so far from them, or 
to inquire, so far as grammar itself would authorize, if the common settled opinion 
oppose it ; especially in this place, where the received doctrine serves well enough to 
our present purpose.' " Reid then goes on at considerable length to show, that 
" every particular Mr. Locke has hinted with regard to that system which he had in 
his mind, but thought it prudent to suppress, tallies exactly with the system of Ber 
keley." (Intellectual Powers, Ess. II. ch. 10.) 

Stewart does not coincide with Reid. In quoting the same passage of Locke, he 
says of it, that " when considered in connection with some others in his writings, it 
would almost tempt one to think, that a theory concerning matter, somewhat analogous 
to that of Boscovich, had occasionally passed through his mind;" and then adduces 
various reasons in support of this opinion, and in opposition to Reid's. (Philosophical 
Essays, Ess. II. ch. 1, p. 63.) 

The whole arcanum in the passage in question is, however, revealed by M. Costs, 
the French translator of the Essay, and of several other of the works of Locke, with 
whom the philosopher lived in the same family, and on the most intimate terms, for the 
last seven years of his life; and who, though he has never been consulted, affords often 
the most important information in regard to Locke's opinions. To this passage, there is 
in the fourth edition of Coste's translation, a very curious note appended, of which the 
following is an abstract. " Here Mr. Locke excites our curiosity without being inclined 
to satisfy it. Many persons having imagined that he had communicated to me this 
mode of explaining the creation of matter, requested, when my translation first appeared, 
that I would inform them what it was ; but I was obliged to confess, that Mr. Locke 
had not made even me a partner in the secret. At length, long after his death, Sir 
Isaac Newton, to whom I was accidentally speaking of this part of Mr. Locke's book, 
discovered to me the whole mystery. He told me, smiling, that it was he himself who 
had imagined this manner of explaining the creation of matter, and that the thought 
had struck him, one day, when this question chanced to turn up in a conversation be- 
tween himself, Mr. Locke, and the late Earl of Pembroke. The following is the way 
in which he explained to them his thought : ' We may be enabled' (he said) ' to form 



200 IDEALISM. 

therefore, but little creditable to the acuteness of Norris, that he, 
a Protestant, should have adopted the Mallebranchian hypothesis, 
without rejecting its Catholic incumbrance. The honor of first 
promulgating an articulate scheme of absolute idealism was thus 
left to Berkeley and Collier ; and though both are indebted to 
Mallebranche for the principal arguments they adduce, each is 
also entitled to the credit of having applied them with an ingen- 
uity peculiar to himself. 

It is likewise to the credit of Collier's sagacity that he has 
noticed (and he is the only modern philosopher, we have found, 
to have anticipated our observation), the incompatibility of the 
Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist with the non-existence of mat- 
ter. In the concluding chapter of his work, in which he speaks 
" of the use and consequences of the foregoing treatise," he enu- 
merates as one " particular usefulness with respect to religion," 
the refutation it affords of "the real presence of Christ's body in 
the Eucharist, in which the Papists have grafted the doctrine of 
transubstantiation." He says : 

" Now nothing can be more evident, than that both the sound and ex- 
plication of this important doctrine are founded altogether on the suppo- 
sition of external matter; so that, if this be removed, there is not any thing 
left whereon to build so much as the appearauce of a question. — For if, 
after this, it be inquired whether the substance of the bread, in this 
sacrament, be not changed into the substance of the body of Christ, the 
accidents or sensible appearances remaining as before ; or suppose this 
should be affirmed to be the fact, or at least possible, it may indeed be 
shown to be untrue or impossible, on the supposition of an external world, 
from certain consequential absurdities which attend it ; but to remove an 
external world, is to prick it in its pitnctum saliois, or quench its very 
vital fame . For if there is no external matter, the very distinction is lost 
between the substance and accidents, or sensible species of bodies, and 
these last will become the sole essence of material objects. So that, if 

some rude conception of the creation of matter, if we suppose that God by his power had 
•prevented the entrance of any thing into a certain portion of pure space, which is of its 
nature penetrable, eternal, necessary, infinite ; for henceforward this portion of space 
would be endowed with impenetrability, one of the essential qualities of matter : and as 
pure space is absolutely uniform, we have only again to suppose that God communicated 
the same impenetrability to another portion of space, and ice should then obtain in a cer- 
tain sort the notion of the mobility of matter, another quality which is also very esse?itial 
to it.' Thus, then, we are relieved of the embarrassment of endeavoring to discover 
what it was that Mr. Locke had deemed it advisable to conceal from his readers : for 
the above is all that gave him occasion to tell us — ' if we would raise our thoughts as 
far as they could reach, we might be able to aim at some dim and seeming conception 
how matter might at first be made,' " &c. — This suffices to show what was the general 
purport of Locke's expressions, and that Mr. Stewart's conjecture is at least nearer to 
the truth than Dr. Reid's. 



COLLIER'S IDEALISM. 201 

these are supposed to remain as before, there is no possible room for the 
supposal of any change, in that the thing supposed to be changed, is here 
shown to be nothing at all." (P. 95.) 

But we must conclude. — What has now been said, in reference 
to a part of its contents, may perhaps contribute to attract the 
attention of those interested in the higher philosophy, to this very 
curious volume. We need hardly add, that Mr. Benson's Memoirs 
of Collier should be bound up along with it. 



LITERATURE. 



I.-EPISTOLJE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM; 

THE NATIONAL SATIRE OF GERMANY. 1 

(March, 1831.) 

Epistolce Obscurorum Virorum, aliaque aevi decimi sexti moni- 
menta rarissima. — Die Briefe der Finsterlinge an Magister 
Ortuinus von Deventer, nebst andern sehr seltenen Beytraegen 
zur Litteratur- Sitten- und Kirchengeschichte des Sechszehn- 
ter Jahrhunderts. Herausgegeben und erlaeutert durch Dr. 
Ernst Muencii. 8vo. Leipzig : 1827. 

With the purest identity of origin, the G-ermans have shown 
always the weakest sentiment of nationality. Descended from 
the same ancestors, speaking a common language, unconquered 
by a foreign enemy, and once the subject of a general govern- 
ment, they are the only people in Europe who have passively 
allowed their national unity to be broken down, and submitted, 
like cattle, to be parceled and reparceled into flocks, as suited 
the convenience of their shepherds. The same unpatriotic apathy 
is betrayed in their literary as in their political existence. In 
other countries taste is perhaps too exclusively national ; in Ger- 
many it is certainly too cosmopolite. Teutonic admiration seems, 
indeed, to be essentially centrifugal; and literary partialities 

1 [Translated into German by Dr. Vogler, in the Altcs und Neues of 1832 ; after 
being largely extracted in various other literary journals of the Empire. I am aware 
of no attempt to gainsay the proof of authorship here detailed ; or, in general, the 
justice of the criticism. — A considerable number of additions have been inserted in 
this article ; but these, as they affect no personal interest, it has not been thought 
necessary often to distinguish.] 



RISE OF HUMANE STUDIES IN GERMANY. 203 

have in the Empire inclined always in favor of the foreign. The 
Germans were long familiar with the literature of every other 
nation, before they thought of cultivating, or rather creating, a 
literature of their own ; and when this was at last attempted, 
Gavfia twv airovrwv was still the principle that governed in the 
experknent. It was essayed, by a process of foreign infusion, to 
elaborate the German tongue into a vehicle of pleasing commu- 
nication ; nor were they contented to reverse the operation, until 
the project had been stultified by its issue, and the purest and 
only all-sufficient of the modern languages degraded into a Baby- 
lonish jargon, without a parallel in the whole history of speech. 
A counterpart to this overweening admiration of the strange and 
distant, is the discreditable indifference manifested by the Ger- 
mans to the noblest monuments of native genius. To their eter- 
nal disgrace, the works of Leibnitz were left to be collected by 
a Frenchman ; while the care denied by his countrymen to the 
great representative of German universality, was lavished, with 
an eccentric affection, on the not more important speculations 
of Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, and Cudworth. But no neglect, 
even by their own confession, has weighed so long or so heavily 
against the G-ermans, as the want of a collective edition of the 
works of their great national patriot, Ulrich von Hutten, and 
of a critical and explanatory edition of their great national 
satire, the Epistol^; Obscurorum Virorum. This reproach has, 
in part, been recently removed. Dr. Muench has accomplished 
the one, and attempted the other ; we wish we could say — ac- 
complished well, or attempted successfully. We speak at present 
only of the latter ; and, as an essay toward (what is still want- 
ing) an explanatory introduction, shall premise a rapid outline 
<>f the circumstances which occasioned this celebrated satire — a 
satire which, though European in its influence, has yet, as Herder 
justly observes, " effected for Germany incomparably more, 
than Hudibras for England, or Garagantua for France, or the 
Knight of La Mancha for Spain." It gave the victory to Reuch- 
lin over the Begging Friars, and to Luther over the Court of 
Rome. 

The Italians excepted, no people took so active a part in the 
revival of ancient literature as the Germans ; yet in no country 
did the champions of the new intelligence obtain less adventitious 
aid in their exertions, or encounter so formidable a resistance 
from the defenders of the ancient barbarism. Germany did not, 



204 EPISTOL^E OBSCURORUM VIRORTJM. 

like Italy and France, allure the learned fugitives from Constan- 
tinople, to transplant into her seminaries the language and lite- 
rature of Greece ; and though learning was not here deprived 
of all liberal encouragement, still the princes and nobles of the 
Empire did not, as the great Italian families, emulate each other, 
in a munificent patronage of letters. But what in Germany prin- 
cipally contributed to impede the literary reformation, was the 
opposition which it met with in the great literary corporations 
themselves. In the other countries of Europe, especially in 
France and England, the first sparks of the rekindled light had 
been fostered in the universities ; ' these were in fact the centres 
from whence the new illumination was diffused. In Germany, 
on the contrary, the academic walls contained the most resolute 
enemies of reform, and in the universities were found the last 
strongholds of an effete, but intolerant scholasticism. Some, 
indeed, of the restorers of polite letters, taught as salaried or 
extraordinary instructors (professores conducti), in the universi- 
ties of Germany ; but their influence was personal, and the tole- 
ration which they obtained, precarious. Dependent always on 
the capricious patronage of the Prince, they were viewed as 
intruders by those bodies who constituted and governed these 
institutions. From them they encountered, not only discourage- 
ment, but oppression ; and the biography of the first scholars 
who attempted, by public instruction, to disseminate a taste for 
classical literature in the great schools of Germany, exhibits 
little else than a melancholy series of wanderings and persecu- 
tions — abandoning one university only, in general, to be ejected 
from another. 

The restoration of classical literature (and classical literature 
involved literature in general), was in Germany almost wholly 
accomplished by individual zeal, aided, principally, by one pri- 
vate institution. This institution was the conventual seminary 
of St. Agnes, near Zwoll, in "Westphalia, founded by the pious 
Thomas a Kempis ; from whence, immediately or mediately, 
issued nearly the whole band of those illustrious scholars who, 
in defiance of every opposing circumstance, succeeded in rapidly 
elevating Germany to a higher European rank in letters, than 



1 No thanks, however, to the universities. They, of course, resisted the inno- 
vation. A king and a minister, Francis and Wolsey, determined the difference; 
hut for them, Budoeus and Colet might have been persecuted like Buschius and 
Reuchlin. 



RISE OF HUMANE STUDIES IN GERMANY. 205 

(rebarbarized by polemical theology and religious wars) she was 
again able to reach for almost three centuries thereafter. 

Six schoolfellows and friends — Count Maurice von Spiegel- 
berg, Rodolph von Lange (Langius), Alexander Hegius, Lewis 
Dringenberg, Antonius Liber, and Rodolphus Agricola — all train- 
ed in the discipline of a Kempis, became, toward the end of the 
fifteenth century, the apostles of this reform in literature and 
education; and this mainly by their exertions with those of their 
disciples, was, in a few years, happily accomplished throughout 
the empire. The two first (we neglect chronology), noblemen 
of rank and dignitaries in the church, co-operated to this end, by 
their liberal patronage of other scholars, and more especially by 
the foundation of improved schools ; the four last, by their skill 
and industry as practical teachers, and by the influence of their 
writings. 1 

After their return from Italy, where they had studied under 
Trapezuntius and Graza, and enjoyed the friendship of Philelphus, 
Laurentius Valla, and Leonardus Aretinus, Von Lange was 
nominated Dean of Munster, and Count Spieg-elberg-, Provost of 
Emmerich. — Through the influence of the former, himself a Latin 
poet of no inconsiderable talent, the decayed school of Munster 
was revived ; supplied with able masters, among whom Camene- 
rius, Csesarius, and Murmellius, were distinguished ; and, in 
spite of every opposition from the predicant friars and university 
of Cologne, the barbarous school-books were superseded, and the 
heathen classics studied, as in the schools of Italy and France. 
From this seminary, soon after its establishment, proceeded Pe- 
trus Nehemius, Josephus Horlenius (the master of Mosellanus), 
Ludolphus Heringius, Alexander Moppensis, Tilemannus Molle- 



1 An account of the Fratres Hieronymici would be an interesting piece of literary 
history. The scattered notices to be found of this association are meagre and incor- 
rect. We may observe, that the celebrated Frieslander, John Wesscl of Gansfurt, an 
alumnus also of the College of St. Agnes, preceded the six confederates, enumerated 
in the text, as a restorer of letters in Germany. Before Reuchlin (whom he initiated 
in Hebrew), he conjoined a knowledge of the three learned languages ; these, which 
be had cultivated in Greece, Italy, and France, he taught, at least privately, on his 
return to Germany, in the universities of Cologne, Heidelberg, and Basle. His eru- 
dition, his scholastic subtlety, with his contempt for scholastic authority, obtained for 
him the title of Lux Mundi and Magistcr Contradictionum. In religious opinions, he 
was the forerunner of Luther. He is not to be confounded (as has been done) with 
the famous preacher, Joannes, variously called Wesalius, de Wessalia, and even Wes- 
selus, accused by the Dominicans of suspicious intercourse with the Jews, and, 
through their influence, unjustly condemned for heresy in 1479, by the Archbishop 
of Mentz. 



206 EPISTOL^E OBSCURORUM VIRORTJM. 

rus (the master of Rivius), &c, who, as able schoolmasters, pro- 
pagated the improvement in education and letters throughout the 
north of Germany. 

A similar reform was effected by Count Spiegelberg in the 
school of Emmerich. 

Hegius, a man of competent learning, but of unrivaled talents 
as a practical instructor, became rector of the school of Daventer; 
and he can boast of having turned out from his tuition a greater 
number of more illustrious scholars than any pedagogue of modern 
times. Among his pupils were, Desiderius Erasmus, Hermannus 
Buschius, Joannes Caesarius, Joannes Murmellius, Joannes Glan- 
dorpius, Conradus Mutianus, Hermannus Torrentinus, Bartho- 
lomscus Coloniensis, Conradus Goclenius, the Aedicollii, Joannes 
and Serratius, Jacobus Montanus, Joannes Peringius, Timannus 
Camenerius, Gerard us Lystrius, Matthaeus Frissemius, Ludolphus 
Geringius, &c. Nor must Ortuinus Gratius be forgotten. 

Dringenberg transplanted the discipline of Zwoll to Schlecht- 
stadt in Alsace ; and he effected for the south of Germany what 
his colleagues accomplished for the north. Among his pupils, 
who almost rivaled in numbers and celebrity those of Hegius, 
were Conradus Celtos, Jacobus Wimphelingius, Beatus Rhenanus 
Joannes Sapidus, Bilibald Pirkheimer, John von Dalberg, Fran- 
ciscus Stadianus, George Simler (the master of Melanchthon), 
and Henricus Bebelius (the master of Brassicanus and Heinrich- 
mann.) 

Liber taught successfully at Kempten and Amsterdam ; and, 
when driven from these cities by the partisans of the ancient 
barbarism, he finally established himself at Alcmar. The most 
celebrated of his pupils were Pope Hadrian VI., Nicolaus Cle- 
nardus, Alardus of Amsterdam, Cornelius Crocus, and Christopho- 
rus Longolius. 

The genius of Agricola displayed the rarest union of original- 
ity, elegance, and erudition. After extorting the reluctant admi- 
ration of the fastidious scholars of Italy, he returned to Germany, 
where his writings, exhortation, and example, powerfully contrib- 
uted to promote the literary reformation. It was only, however, 
in the latter years of his short life, that he was persuaded by 
his friend, Von Dalberg, Bishop of Worms, to lecture publicly 
(though declining the status of Professor) on the Greek and Roman 
authors ; and he delivered, with great applause, a few courses, 
alternately at Heidelberg and Worms. Celtes and Buschius were 



RISE OE HUMANE STUDIES IN GERMANY. 207 

among his auditors. There is no hyperbole in his epitaph by a 
great Italian : 

" Scilicet hoc uno meruit Germania, laudis 

Quicquid habet Latium, Grfficia quicquid habet." 

The first restorers of ancient learning in Germany were thus 
almost exclusively pupils of a Kempis or of his disciples. There 
was, however, one memorable exception in John Reuchlin (Joan- 
nes Capnio), who was not, as his biographers erroneously assert, 
a scholar of Dringenberg at Schlechtstadt. 1 Of him we are again 
to speak. 

We have been thus particular, in order to show that the awak- 
ened enthusiasm for classical studies did not in Germany origin- 
ate in the Universities ; and it was only after a strenuous opposi- 
tion from these bodies that ancient literature at last conquered 
its recognition as an element of academical instruction. At the 
period of which we treat, the prelections and disputations, the 
examinations and honors, of the different faculties, required only 
an acquaintance with the barbarous Latinity of the middle ages. 
The new philology was thus not only a hors d'asuvre in the 
academical system, or, as the Leipsic Masters expressed it, a 
" fifth wheel in the wagon ;" it was abominated as a novelty, 
that threw the ancient learning into discredit, diverted the studi- 
ous from the Universities, emptied the schools of the Magistri, 
and the bursse or colleges over which they presided, and rendered 
contemptible the once honored distinction of a degree. 2 

1 His connection with Zwoll and the Brethren of St. Jerome may, however, be 
established through John Wessel, from whom he learned the elements of Hebrew. 

2 "Attamcn intellexi," writes Magister Unkenbunck to Magister Gratius, "quod 
habetis paucos auditores, et est querela vestra, quod Buschius et Csesarius trahunt 
vobis scholares et supposita abinde, cum tamen ipsi non sciunt ita exponere Poetas 
allegorice, sicut vos, et superaliegare sacram scripturam. Credo quod diabolus est ir. 
illis Poetis. Ipsi destruunt omnes Universitates, et audivi ab uno antiquo Magistro 
Lipsensi, qui fuit Magister 36. annorum, et dixit mihi, quando ipse fuisset invenis, 
tunc ilia Universitas bene stetisset : quia in viginti milliaribus nullus Poeta fuisset. 
Et dixit etiam, quod tunc supposita diligenter compleverunt lectiones suas formales et 
materiales, seu bursales ; et fuit magnum scandalum, quod aliquis studens iret in 
platea, et non haberet Petrum Hispanum, aut Parva Logicalia sub brachio. Et si 
fuerunt Grammatici, tunc portabant Partes Alexandri, vel Vade Mecum, vel Exerci- 
tium Puerorum, aut Opus Minus, aut Dicta loan. Sinthen. Et in scholis advertebant 
diligenter, et habuerunt in honore Magistros Artium, et quando viderunt unum Magis- 
trum, tunc fuerunt perterriti, quasi viderent unum Diabolum. Et dicit etiam, quod 
pro tunc, quater in anno promovebantur Bacculaurii, et semper pro una vice sunt 
sexaginta aut quinquaginta. Et illo tempore Universitas ilia fuit multum in flore, et 
quando unus stetit per annum cum dimidio, fuit promotus in Bacculaurium, et per 
tres annos aut duos cum dimidio, in Magistrum. Et sic parentes eorum fuerunt con- 
tent!, et libenter exposuerunt pccunias ; quia videbant, quod filii sui venerunt ad 
honores. Sed nunc supposita volunt audire Virgilium et Plinium, et alios novos 



208 EPISTOUE obscurorum virorum. 

In possession of power, it is not to be supposed that the patrons 
of scholasticism would tamely allow themselves to be stripped of 
reputation and influence ; and it did not require the ridicule with 
which the " Humanists,'''' or "Poets" as they were styled, now 
assailed them, to exasperate their spirit of persecution. Greek 
in particular, and polite letters in general, were branded as heret- 
ical; 1 and, while the academical youth hailed the first lecturers 
on ancient literature in the Universities, as " messengers from 
Heaven," 2 the academical veterans persecuted these intruders as 

autorcs, et licet audiunt per quinque annos, tamen non promoventur. Et dixit mihi 
amplius talis Magister, quod tempore suo fuerunt duo millia studcntes in Lyptzick, et 
Erfordia; totidem. Et Vienna? quatuor millia, et Colonise etiam tot, et sic de aliis. 
Nunc autem in omnibus Universitatibus non sunt tot supposita, sicut tunc in una, aut 
duabus. Et Magistri Lipsenses nunc valde conqueruntur de paucitate suppositorum, 
quia Poiitce faciunt eis damnum. Et quando parentes mittunt filios suos in bursas, et 
collegia, non volunt ibi manero, sed vadunt ad Poetas, et student nequitias. Et dixit 
mihi, quod ipse Liptzick olim habuit quadraginta domiccllos, et quando ivit in eccle- 
siam, vel ad forum, vel spaciatum in rubetum, tunc ivcrunt post eum. Et fuit tunc 
magnus excessus, studere in Poetria. Et quando unus confitebatur in confessione, 
quod occulte audivit Virgilium ab uno Bacculaurio, tunc Sacerdos imponebat ei 
magnam pocnitentiam, videlicet, jejunarc singulis sextis feriis vel orare quotidie sep- 
tem Psalmos pcenitentiales. Et juravit mihi inconscicntia sua, quod vidit, quod unus 
mauistrandus fuit rejectus, quia unus de examinatoribus semel in die festo vidit ipsum 
legere in Tcrentio. Utinam adhuc staret ita in Universitatibus !" ets. (Epist. Obs. 
Vir. — Vol. II. ep. 46. See also among others, Vol. II. cp. 58 and 63. We quote 
these epistles by number, though this be marked in none of the editions. 

1 " Hseresis," says Erasmus, speaking of these worthies — " hseresis est polite loqui, 
hreresis Grace scire ; quicquid ipsi non intelligunt, quicquid ipsi non faciunt, haeresis 
est. In unum Capnionem clamatur, quia linguas callct." (Opera III. c. 517. ed. 
Clerici.) See also Peutingcr, in Epist. ad Reuchl. (sig. A ii.) Hutten, Prccf Nc minis. 

2 " Omnino fervebat opus," says Cruciger, " et deserebantur tractationcs prioris 
doctrina; atque futilis, et nitor elegantiaque disciplinx politioris expetebantur. Tunc 
Lipsiam Ricardus Crocus, Brit annus, qui in Gallia auditor fuerat Hicronymi Alex- 
andri [Aleandri], venit, anno Chr. MDXV [MDXIV], professusque doctrinam Graca- 
rum littcrarum, omnium amorem favoremque statim est maximum consecutus : quod 
hujus linguae non primordia, ut aliqui ante ipsum, sed integram atque plenam scien- 
tiam illius afferre, et posse hanc totam explicare, doccreque videretur. Negabat meus 
pater, crcdibile nunc esse id, quod ipse tunc cognoverit. Tanquam calitus demissumi 
Crocum omnes vencratos esse aiebat, unumquemque se felicem judicassc, si in fami- 
liaritatem ipsius insinuaretur : docenti vero et mercedem, qua; postularetur, persol- 
vcre ; ct quocumque loco temporcque praesto esse, rccusavisse nemincm : si concubia 
noctc sc conveniri, si quamvis longe extra oppidum jussissct, omnes libenter obsecuti 
fuissent." (Loc. Coram.) (Among the Declamations of Melanchthon, sec Oratio de 
Initiis, &c. and Oratio de Vita Trocedorfii ; see also Camcrarius (the pupil of Croke), 
in the Preface to his Herodotus, and in his Life of Melanchthon.) Dr. Croke (after- 
ward an agent of Henry VIII. in the affair of the divorce, and Public Orator of Cam- 
bridge) was the first Professor of Greek in Leipsic, and the first author of a grammar 
of that language, published in Germany. He founded that school which, under his 
successor, Sir Godfrey Hermann, is now the chief fountain of Hellenic literature in 
Europe. His life ought to be written. Sir Alexander Croke, in his late splendid 
history of the family, has collected some circumstances concerning this distinguished 
scholar ; but a great deal of interesting information still remains ungathercd, among 
his own and the writings of his contemporaries. We could fill a page with mere 
references. 



PERSECUTION OF THE HUMANISTS. 209 

" preachers of perversion," and " winnowers of the devil's chaff." ■ 
Conradus Celtes, Hermannus Busohius, and Joannes Rhagius 
Aesticampianus, were successively expelled from Leipsic ; 2 other 
universities emulated the example. The great University of 
Cologne stood, however, " proudly eminent" in its hostility to the 
new intelligence ; for improvement was there opposed by the 
united influence of the Monks and Masters. When Von Lange 
commenced his reformation of the school of Munster, a vehement 
remonstrance was transmitted from the faculties of Cologne to 
the bishop and chapter of that see, reprobating the projected 
change in the schoolbooks hitherto in use, and remonstrating 
against the introduction of Pagan authors into the course of juve- 
nile instruction. Foiled in this attempt, the obscurants of that 
venerable seminary resisted only the more strenuously every effort 
at a reform within Cologne itself. They oppressed and relegated, 
one after another, Bartholomseus Coloniensis, the two Aedicollii 
(Joannes and Serratius), Joannes Murmellius, Joannes Csesarius, 
and Hermannus Buschius, as dangerous innovators, who cor- 
rupted the minds of youth by mythological fancies, and the study 
of unchristian authors. Supported, however, by Count Nuenar, 
dean of the canonical chapter, and the influence of his own rank, 
Buschius, a nobleman by birth, the scholar of Hegius, and friend 
and schoolfellow of Erasmus, stood his ground even in Cologne, 
against the scholastic zealots ; and, though thrice compelled to 
abandon the field of contest, he finally succeeded in discomfiting, 
even in their firmest stronghold, the enemies of light. Pliny and 
Ovid were read along with Boethius and Sedulius ; the ancient 
school-books — the Doctrinale of Alexander, the Disciplina Scho- 
larum, the Catkolicon, the Mammotrectus (Mammaetractus), the 
Gemma Gemmarum, the Labyrinthus, the Dormisecure, &c. &c, 

1 Buschii Vallum Humanitatis, ed. Burckhardi, p. 15. In Leipsic, humane letters 
were styled by the theologians Damonum cibus, Das.rn.onum opsonium, Aegyptiae ollae, 
virulentae Aegyptiorum dapcs. (Panegyricum Lipsiensis Theologi. — Praef. Lipsiae r 
1514.) 

2 We have before us an oration of Aesticampianus, delivered in 1511, on his de- 
parture from Leipsic, after the public schools had been closed against him by the 
faculty of arts. We extract one passage — " Quem enim poetarum eloquentium nop 
sunt persecuti patres vestri, et quem vos ludibrio non habuistis, qui ad vos expoliendos 
quasi cmlitus sunt demissi 1 Nam, ut e multis paucos referam, Conradum Celten 
pene hostiliter expulistis ; Hermannum Buschium diu ac multum vexatum ejecistis ; 
Joannem quoque Aesticampianum variis machinis oppugnatum, tandem evertitis. 
Quis tandem Poetarum ad vos veniet 1 Nemo, hercle, nemo. Inculti ergo jejunique 
vivetis, foedi animis et inglorii, qui, nisi poenitentiam egeritis, damnati omnes immo- 
rieminV , 

o 



210 - EPISTOLjE obscttrortjm virorum. 

were at last no longer, even in Cologne, recognized as of exclu- 
sive authority ; and, within a few years after their disgrace in 
this fastness of prescriptive barbarism, they were exploded from 
all the schools and universities throughout the empire. In this 
difficult exploit Buschius was aided by Erasmus, Hutten, Me- 
lanchthon, Torrentinus, Bebelius, Simler, &c. 

This was, however, but a skirmish, compared with another 
kindred and simultaneous contest ; and the obstinacy of Buschius, 
in defense of classical Latinity, only exasperated the theologians 
of Cologne to put forth all their strength in opposition to Reuch- 
lin, a still more influential champion of illumination, and in sup- 
pression of the more obnoxious study of Hebrew. 

The character of Reuchlin is one of the most remarkable in 
that remarkable age ; for it exhibits, in the highest perfection, a 
combination of qualities which are in general found incompatible. 
At once a man of the world and of books, he excelled equally in 
practice and speculation ; was a statesman and a philosopher, a 
jurist and a divine. Nobles, and princes, and emperors, honored 
him with their favor, and employed him in their most difficult 
affairs ; while the learned throughout Europe looked up to him 
as the " trilingue miraculum," the " phoenix litterarum," the 
"eruditorum ak<f)a" In Italy, native Romans listened with 
pleasure to his Latin declamation ; and he compelled the jealous 
Greeks to acknowledge that " Greece had overflown the Alps." 
Of his countrymen, he was the first to introduce the study of 
ancient literature into the German Universities ; the first who 
opened the gates of the east, unsealed the word of God, and un- 
vailed the sanctuary of Hebrew wisdom. Agricola was the only 
German of the fifteenth century who approached him in depth of 
classical erudition ; and it was not till after the commencement 
of the sixteenth, that Erasmus rose to divide with him the admi- 
ration of the learned. As an Oriental scholar, Reuchlin died 
without a rival. Cardinal Fisher, who " almost adored his 
name," made a pilgrimage from England, for the sole purpose 
of visiting the object of his worship ; and that great divine can- 
didly confesses to Erasmus, that he regarded Reuchlin as "bear- 
ing off from all men the palm of knowledge, especially in what 
pertained to the hidden matters of religion and philosophy." At 
the period of which we speak, Reuchlin, withdrawn from academ- 
ical tuition to the conduct of political affairs, was not, however, 
unemployed in peaceably promoting by his writings the cause of 



HISTORY OF THE REUCHLINIAN PROCESS. 211 

letters ; when suddenly he found himself, in the decline of life, 
the victim of a formidable persecution, which threatened ruin to 
himself, and proscription to his favorite pursuits. 

The alarming progress of the new learning had at last con- 
vinced the theologians and philosophers of the old leaven, that 
their credit was only to be restored by a desperate and combined 
effort — not against the partisans, but against the leaders of the 
literary reformation. " The two eyes of Germany" were to be 
extinguished ; and the theologians of Cologne undertook to deal 
with Reuchlin, while Erasmus was left to the mercies of their 
brethren of Louvain. The assailants pursued their end with 
obstinacy, if not with talent ; that they did not succeed, showed 
that the spirit of the age had undergone a change — a change 
which the persecutions themselves mainly contributed to accom- 
plish. 

It was imagined that Hebrew literature, and the influence of 
Reuchlin, could not be more effectually suppressed, than by ren- 
dering both the objects of religious suspicion. In this attempt, 
the theologians of Cologne found an appropriate instrument in 
John Pfefferkorn, a Jew, who had taken refuge in Christianity 
from the punishment which his crimes had merited at the hands 
of his countrymen. 1 In the course of the years 1505 and 1509, 
four 2 treatises (three in Latin, one in German) were published 
under the name of the new convert ; the scope of which was to 
represent the Jewish religion in the most odious light. The next 
step was to obtain from the Emperor an edict, commanding that 
all Hebrew books, with exception of the Bible, should be searched 
for, and burned, throughout the empire ; on the ground, that the 
Jewish literature was nothing but a collection of libels on the 
character of Christ and Christianity. The cultivation of Hebrew 
learning would thus be rendered impossible, or at least discour- 
aged; and, at the same time, it was probably expected that the 
Jews would bribe liberally to evade the execution of the decree. 

1 Maius, in his Vita Reuchlini, Jacobus Thomasius, in the Observationes Hallenses, 
Dupin in his Nouvelle Biblioiheque des Auteurs Ecclesiastiques, Basnage in his Histoire 
des Juifs, and many others, confounded this John Pfefferkorn with a relapsed Jew of 
the same name, who was burned for blasphemy at Halle in 1514. The Epistolce Ob- 
scurorum Virorum, and the Poemata of Hutten, might have kept them right. Our 
John was living in 1521. 

2 These tracts are extremely rare. Meiners (to say nothing of Muench) was ac- 
quainted only with three. In our collection there is a, fourth, entitled Hostis Judczorum, 
ets. with the Epigramma politum of Ortuinus against the Jews, in the title page, which 
was reprinted in his Lamentationes Obscurorum Virorum. 



212 EPISTOL.E OBSCURORTJM VIRORTJM. 

Maximilian was, in fact, weak or negligent enough to listen to 
the misrepresentation, and even to bestow on Pfefferkorn the 
powers necessary to carry the speculation into effect ; hut some 
informality having been discovered, in the terms of the commis- 
sion, the Jews had interest to obtain a suspension of the order ; 
and previous to its renewal, a mandate was issued, requiring, 
among other opinions, that of Reuchlin, as to the nature and 
contents of the Jewish writings. Of the referees, Reuchlin alone 
complied with the requisition. He reported, that to extirpate 
Hebrew literature in the mass, was not only unjust, but inexpe- 
dient ; that a large proportion of the Rabbinic writings was not 
of a theological character at all, and consisted of works not only 
innocent, but highly useful ; nay, that the religious books them- 
selves, while not, in general, such as they had been malevolently 
represented, were of the greatest importance to Christianity, as 
furnishing in fact, the strongest arguments in refutation of the 
doctrine they defended. 

This was precisely what the obscurants of Cologne desired. 
Pfefferkorn, with their assistance, published (1511), under the 
name of Handglass (Handspiegel), a tract in which Reuchlin was 
held up to religious detestation, as the advocate of Jewish blas- 
phemy, and as guilty of many serious errors in the faith. Reuch- 
lin condescended to reply ; and his Eyeglass (Augenspiegel) ex- 
posed the ignorance and falsehood of his contemptible adversary. 
The principals now found it necessary to come forward. Arnold 
Tnngern, as Dean of the Theological Faculty of Cologne, under- 
took to sift the orthodoxy of the Eyeglass ; forty-three proposi- 
tions " de Judaico favore nimis suspectse," were extracted and 
published ; and Reuchlin summoned to an open recantation, 
(1512). In his Defensio contra calumniatores st/os Colonienses, 
(1513), Reuchlin annihilated the accusation, and treated his 
accusers with the unmitigated severity which their malevolence 
and hypocrisy deserved. These were James Hoogstraten, a man 
of no inconsiderable ability, and of extensive influence, as mem- 
ber of the Theological Faculty of Cologne, as Prior of the Domin- 
ican Convent in that city, and " Inquisitor haereticse pravitatis," 
for the dioceses of Cologne, Mentz, and Treves — Arnold of Tun- 
gem (or Luyd), Dean of the Theological Faculty, and head of 
the Burse of St. Lawrence — and Ortuinus Gratius (Ortwin von 
G-raes), a pupil of Hegius, and now a leading member of the 
Faculty of Arts, but a sycophant who, in hopes of preferment, 



HISTORY OF THE HEUCHLINIAN PROCESS. 213 

prostituted talents in subservience to the enemies of that learning 
in which he was himself no contemptible proficient. 

Reuchlin was not ignorant of the enemies with whom he had to 
grapple. The Odium Theologicum has been always proverbial ; 
the Dominicans were exasperated and leagued against him; no 
opposition had hitherto prevailed against that powerful order, who 
had recently crushed Joannes de Wesalia, for a similar offense, by 
a similar accusation ; while a contemporary pope emphatically de- 
clared, that he would rather provoke the enmity of the most formi- 
dable sovereign, than offend even a single friar of those mendicant 
fraternities, who, under the mantle of humility, reigned omnipo- 
tent over the Christian world. Reuchlin wrote to his friends 
throughout Europe, entreating their protection and interest in ob- 
taining for him new allies. He received from all quarters the 
warmest assurances of sympathy and co-operation. Not only in 
Germany, but in Italy, France, and England, a confederation was 
organized between the friends of humane learning. 1 The cause of 
Reuchlin became the cause of letters ; Europe was divided into 
two hostile parties ; the powers of light stood marshalled against 
the powers of darkness. So decisive was this struggle regarded 
for the interests of literature, that the friends of illumination saw, 
in its unexpected issue, the special providence of (rod ; 2 and so im- 
mediate were its consequences in preparing the religious reforma- 
tion, that Luther (Dec. 1518) acknowledges to Reuchlin, that u he 
only followed in his steps- — only consummated his victory, with in- 
ferior strength, indeed, but not inferior courage, in breaking the 
teeth of the Behemoth"* It was this contest, indeed, which first 
proved that the nations were awake, and public opinion again the 
paramount tribunal. In this tribunal the cause of Reuchlin was 
in reality decided, and his triumph had been long complete before 
it was formally ratified by a papal sentence. Reuchlin's victory, 
in public opinion, was accomplished by a satire ; of which, the 
anathema on its publication by the holy see, only gave intensity 
to the effect.— -But to return. 

1 England, for example, sent to the " army of the Reuchlinists," More, Fish.tr, 
Lynacre, Grocyn, Colet, Latimer, Tunstall, and Ammonius of Lucca ; " omnes," says 
Erasmus to Reuchlin, " Grsece docti praeter Coletum ; (but as we know from Erasmus, 
Colet soon made of that language an assiduous study). (Epist. ill. Vir. ad Reucld. L. 
II. sig. Ti.) We may notice that this rare and interesting collection has_/be letters 
of Erasmus, not to be found in any edition of his works. 

2 Jo. Cagsarius (Ep. ad Reuchl. Lib. II. sig. X. iii.) and Eobanus Hessus (ibid. Z. i.) 
[See Reuchlin's letter at the end of this article.] 

3 Epist. ad Reuchl. Lib. II. sig. C. iii. [and in De Wette's Luther's Briefe, I. 196.] 



214 EPISTOLiE OBSG'URORTJM VIRORTTM. 

Hoogstraten now cited Reuchlin before the court of Inquisition 
at Mentz (1513). Reuchlin declined Hoogstraten as a judge ; 
he was his personal enemy, and not his provincial ; and when 
these objections were overruled he appealed to the Pope. This 
appeal, notwithstanding, and in contempt of a sist on the pro- 
ceedings by the Elector of Mentz, Hoogstraten and his theological 
brethren of Cologne condemned, and publicly burned the writings 
of Reuchlin, as "offensive, dangerous to religion, and savoring 
of heresy;" and to enhance the infamy, they obtained from the 
Sorbonne of Paris, and the Theological Faculties of Mentz, Er- 
furth, and Lou vain, an approval of the sentence. Their triumph 
was wild and clamorous, but it was brief. On Reuchlin's appeal, 
the Pope had delegated the investigation to the Bishop of Spires ; 
and that prelate, without regard to the determinations of the rev- 
erend faculties, decided summarily in favor of Reuchlin, and 
condemned Hoogstraten in the costs of process (1514). It was 
now the Inquisitor's turn to appeal ; [but Reuchlin likewise cited 
him to Rome. 1 ] The cause was referred by Leo to a body of 
jommissioners in Rome ; and Hoogstraten, amply furnished 
with money, proceeded to that capital. The process thus pro- 
tracted, every mean was employed by the Dominicans to secure 
a victory. In Rome, they assailed the judges with bribes and 
intimidation. In Germany, they vented their malice, and en- 
deavored to promote their cause by caricatures and libels, among 
which last the Tocsin (Sturmglock) ostensibly by Pfefferkorn, 
was conspicuous ; while the pulpits resounded with calumnies 
against their victim. 

Amidst this impotent discharge of squibs, there was launched, 
from an unknown hand, a pasquil against the persecutors of 
Reuchlin. It fell among them like a bomb, scattering dismay 
and ruin in its explosion. This tremendous satire was the 
" Epistolce Obscuromm Virorum ad venerabilem virum Magis- 
trum Ortuinum GratiumP Its purport is as follows : 

Before the commencement of his persecution, Reuchlin had 
published a volume of letters from his correspondents ; and 
Reuchlin's enemy, Ortuinus, is now, in like manner, supposed 
to print a volume of the epistles addressed to him by friends of 
his. But while the correspondents of Ortuinus were, of course, 
any thing but less distinguished than those of Reuchlin, the for- 

1 [See the letter of Reuchlin (now printed for the first time) at the end of the 
article.] 



CHARACTER OF THE SATIRE. 215 

mer is supposed to entitle his collection — " Epistolae Obscurorum 
Virorum ad Ortuinum," in modest ridicule of the arrogance of the 
" Epistolae Illustrium Virorum ad Reuchlinum, virum nostra 
aetate doctissi?num." x The plan of the satire is thus extremely- 
simple : — to make the enemies of Reuchlin and of polite letters 
represent themselves ; and the representation is managed with a 
truth of nature, only equaled by the absurdity of the postures in 
which the actors are exhibited. " Barbare ridentur barbari" 
say Hutten himself and Erasmus of the Epistles: and never, 
certainly, were unconscious barbarism, self-glorious ignorance, 
intolerant stupidity, and sanctimonious immorality, so ludicrously 
derfneated ; never, certainly, did delineation less betray the arti- 
fice of ridicule. The Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum are at once 
the most cruel and the most natural of satires ; and as such, 
they were the most effective. They converted the tragedy of 
Reuchlin's persecution into a farce ; annihilated in public con- 
sideration the enemies of intellectual improvement ; determined a 
radical reform in the German universities ; and even the asso- 
ciates of Luther, in Luther's lifetime, acknowledged that no 
other writing had contributed so powerfully to prepare the down- 
fall of the papal domination. 2 "Veritas non est de ratione 
faceti;" but never was argument more conducive to the interest 
of truth. 

Morally considered, indeed, this satire is an atrocious libel, 
which can only be palliated on the plea of retaliation, necessity, 
the importance of the end, and the consuetude of the times. Its 
victims are treated like vermin ; hunted without law, and exterm- 
inated without mercy. What truth there may be in the wicked 
scandal it retails, we are now unable to determine. 

Critically considered, its representations may, to a mere modern 
reader, appear to sacrifice verisimilitude to effect. But by those 
who can place themselves on a level with the age in which the 
Epistolse appeared, their ridicule (a few passages excepted) will 
not be thought to have overshot its aim. So truly, in fact, did it 
hit the mark, that the objects of the ridicule themselves, with the 

1 See E. 0. V. Vol. II. Ep. 1. Dr. Muench is wrong in supposing that " Epistolae 
Obscurorum Virorum," means " Briefe der Finstsrlinge." The original title does not 
sufficiently conceal the satire ; the translated openly declares it. 

2 " Nescio," says Justus Jonas, " an ullum hujus seculi scriptum sic papistico regno 
nocuerit, sic omnia papistica ridicula reddiderit, ut hse Obscurorum Virorum Epistolse, 
quae omnia, minima, maxima, clericorum vitia verterint in risum." — Epist. Anonymi 
ad Crotum. 



216 EPISTOLjE obscurorum virorum. 

exception of those who were necessarily in the secret, read the 
letters as the genuine product of their brethren, and even hailed 
the publication as highly conducive to the honor of scholasticism 
and monkery. 

In 1516, immediately after the appearance of the first volume, 
thus writes Sir Thomas More: — " Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum 
operse pretium est videre quantopere placent omnibus, et doctis 
joco, et indoctis serio, qui, dum ridemus, putant rideri stylum 
tantum, quem illi non defendunt, sed gravitate sententiarum 
dicunt compensatum, et latere sub rudi vagina pulcherrimum 
gladium. Utinam fuisset inditus libello alius titulus ! profecto 
intra centum annos homines studio stupidi non sensissent nasum 
quanqum rhinocerotico longiorem." (Erasmi Op. iii., p. 1575). 

" Pessime consuluit," says Erasmus in 1518, "rebus humanis, 
qui titulum indidit Obscurorum Virorum: quod ni titulus prodi- 
disset lusum, et hodie passim legerentur illse Epistolae, tanquam 
in gratiam Praedicatorum scriptae. Adest hie Lovanii, Magister 
Noster, pridem Prior apud Bruxellas, qui viginti libellos coemerat, 
gratificaturus amicis, paulo antequam Bulla ilia prodiret, quae 
effulminat eum libellum. Primum, optabam non editum, verum 
ubi fuerat editus, optabam alium titulum." — And again, in a letter 
some ten years thereafter : — Ubi primum exissent Epistolce Obscu- 
rorum Virorum miro Monachorum applausu exceptae sunt apud 
Britannos a Franciscanis ac Dominicanis, qui sibi persuadebant eas 
in Reuchlini contumeliam, et Monachorum favorem, serio proditas ; 
quumque quidam egregie doctus, sed nasutissimus, fingeret se 
nonnihil offendi stylo, consolati sunt hominem : — ' Ne spectaris,' 
inquiunt, ' 6 bone, orationis cutem, sed sententiarum vim.' Nee 
hodie deprehendissent, ni quidam, addita epistola, lectorem admo- 
nuisset rem non esse seriam." (Erasmus probably refers to the 
penult letter of the second volume, in which Ortuinus is addressed 
as " Omnium Barbarorum defensor, qai clamat more asinino" &c.) 
" Post, in Brabantia, Prior quidam Dominicanus et Magister 
Noster, volens innotescere patribus, coemit aeervum eorum libel- 
lorum, ut dono mitteret ordinis Proceribus, nihil dubitans quin 
in ordinis honorem fuissent scriptae. Q,uis fungus possit esse 
stupidior !" {Ibid. pp. 1678, 1110). 

" Quis fungus possit esse stupidior !" — Erasmus would have 
wondered less at the stupidity of the sufferers, and more, perhaps, 
at the dexterity of the executioner, could he have foreseen, that 
one of the most learned scholars in England, and he the most 



CHARACTER OF THE SATIRE. 217 

learned of her bibliographers, should have actually republished 
these letters as a serious work ; and that one of our wittiest satir- 
ists should have reviewed that publication, without a suspicion 
of the lurking Momus. And what is almost equally astonishing, 
these absurdities have never been remarked. 

In 1710, there was printed in London the most elegant edition 1 
that has yet appeared of the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, which 
the editor, Michael Maittaire, seriously represents as the produc- 
tion of their ostensible authors, and with a simplicity worthy of 
the Obscure themselves, takes credit to himself for rescuing, as 
he imagines, from oblivion, so curious a specimen of conceited 
ignorance, and vain-glorious stupidity. — But what ensued was 
still more wonderful. The edition, Maittaire dedicates " Isaaco 
Bickerstaff, Armigero, Magnce Britannice Censori ;" and Steele, 
in a subsequent number of the Tatler, after acknowledging the 
compliment, thus notices the book itself: — The purpose of the 
work is signified in the dedication, in very elegant language, and 
fine raillery. (!) It seems this is a collection of letters, which 
some profound blockheads, who lived before our times, have writ- 
ten in honor of each other, and for their mutual information in 
each other's absurdities. (! !) They are mostly of the German na- 
tion, whence from time to time, inundations have flowed, more 
pernicious to the learned world than the swarms of G-oths and 
Vandals to the politic. (!! !) It is, methinks, wonderful, that 
fellows could be aivake, and utter such incoherent conceptions, 
and converse with great gravity like learned men, without the 
least taste of knowledge or good sense. It would have been an 
endless labor to have taken any other method of exposing such 
impertinencies, than by a publication of their own ivorks, where 
you see their follies, according to the ambition of such virtuosi, 
in a most correct edition." (! ! ! !) And so forth. — The monks are 
no marvel after this. 

These letters have been always, however, a stumbling-block to 
our British divines, critics, and historians. 

Knight, in his Life of Erasmus, knows nothing of the Epistolae, 
and less than nothing of their authors. 

Jortin has made as, with his talents, he could hardly fail to 

1 A re-impression of this edition, and with the name of the same bookseller (Cle- 
ments), appeared in 1742. We know not on what grounds Herr Ebert (the highest 
bibliographical authority certainly in Europe), asserts that this re-impression was, in 
reality, published in Switzerland. The paper and print seem decidedly English. 



218 EPISTOLiE OBgCUROBiUM VIROfiTTM. 

make, an amusing farrago out of the life and writings of Eras- 
mus ; though not even superficially versed in the literary history 
of the sixteenth century. Of the German language he knows 
nothing ; knows nothing of the most necessary hooks. He rarely, 
in fact, ventures beyond the text of Erasmus and Le Clerc, with- 
out stumbling. He confesses to having seen only the first of the 
three volumes of Barckhard's Vita Hutteni ; nay that he obtained 
Burigny's Vie cPErasme, only as he had finished his own. Alto- 
gether, Jortin was not in a position to judge aright the character 
of Erasmus; nor is he even on his guard against the selfishness, 
meanness, and timidity of that illustrious genius. Accordingly, 
all the unworthy falsehoods which Erasmus whispers about his 
former friend, are unsuspiciously retailed as truths ; for Jortin 
was unaware even of the authors by whom these are exposed, 
and the reputation of Hutten vindicated. Of Hutten, indeed — 
his character, genius, writings, and exploits — he every where 
betrays the profoundest ignorance. Nor has he blundered less in 
regard to the Epistolee Obscurorum Virorum, than in regard to 
their great author. The Jew, Pfefferkorn, he knows only as a 
writer against the Epistolee, and knows not that these were 
written, among others, against him. The Epistolee themselves, 
which he could never have perused, but with which especially, as 
historian of Erasmus, he ought to have been familiar, he describes 
as " a piece of harmless wit." Finally, in utter unacquaintance 
with the Fasciculus of Ortuinus, though himself an historian of 
the Church, and that remarkable source of ecclesiastical history, 
republished in England by an Anglican divine ; — he conceives it 
to be only a collection of " Epistolee Clarorum Virorum" a coun- 
terpart and precursor, it would appear, to the Epistolee Obscuro- 
rum Virorum, published twenty years before, confusing it proba- 
bly with the " Epistola Illustrium Virorum ad FheuclilinumP 

A late accomplished author (Lord Woodhouselee), asserts, that 
the Epistolee were written in imitation of Arias Montanus's ver- 
sion of the Bible. That learned Spaniard was born some ten 
years subsequent to the supposed parody of his Interpretatio 
lateralis. 

The only other notice in English literature of this celebrated 
satire that occurs to us, is an article on the subject, which ap- 
peared a few years ago in the Retrospective Revieiv. "We recol- 
lect it only as a meagre and inaccurate compilation from the most 
superficial authorities. 



OPINIONS TOUCHING THEIR AUTHORSHIP. 219 

No question in the history of letters has been more variously- 
answered than that touching the conception and authorship of 
these celebrated epistles. Reuchlin and Erasmus alone, have 
for themselves, expressly denied the authorship ; which has been 
otherwise attributed to an individual — to a few — and to many. 

An individual. — Jovius, Valerius Andreas, Koch, Opmeer, Maius, 
Naude, Grehres, and others, hold Reuchlin himself to have been 
sole author. Caspar Barthius, J. Thomasius, Tribbechovius, 
Morhoff, Loescher, "VVeislinger, and Schurzfleisch, attribute them 
more or less exclusively to Hutten. Du Pin gives them to Reuch- 
lin or to Hutten. Justus Jonas, Olearius, Kapp, and Weller, as- 
sign them to Crotus. Some, as Sonleutner, have given them to 
Eobanus Hessus ; — others to Erasmus ; — and others to Euricius 
Cordus ; — Groldastus, again, refers them to Brussianus ; — and 
Grisbert Voetius to the poet-laureate Glareanus. 

A few. — Grundling views Reuchlin as the exclusive writer of 
the first part, assisted by Erasmus and Hutten in the second. — 
In both volumes, Hutten has been regarded as the principal, 
Crotus as the assistant, by the Unschuldige Nachrichten of 1716, 
Veller, Meiners, Panzer, Lobstein, and Grenthe. — But Duchat, 
C. Gr. Mueller and Erhard view Crotus as sole author of the first 
volume, and Hutten, perhaps others, as his coadjutors in the 
second. — Angst, as deviser of the whole, and exclusive writer of 
the first volume, and, with the aid of Hutten, Crotus, and others, 
as principal author of the second, has found an advocate in Moh- 
nicke. — Finally, by some anonymous writers, Hutten and Eoba- 
nus have been viewed as joint authors of both volumes. 

Many. — Hamelmann, followed by Reimann and Placcius, be- 
stows the joint honor, among others, on Count Nuenar, Hutten, 
Reuchlin, and Buschius ; — to whom Reichenberg adds Erasmus, 
and Ccesarius /—while Freitag divides it between Crotus, Hut- 
ten, Buschius, Aesticampianus, Ccesarius, R.euchlin, Pirkheimer, 
Glandorpius, and Eobanus. — Burckhard originally gave the au- 
thorship of the whole to Hutten, Nuenar, Reuchlin, Buschius, 
and Casarius, with Stromer and Pirkheimer as probable coadju- 
tors ; but after the publication of the " Epistola Anonymi ad 
Crotum," and herein he is followed by Floegel, to Hutten and 
Crotus, as inventors and principal writers of both volumes, assist- 
ed by Nuenar, Aesticampianus, Buschius, Ccesarius, Reuchlin, 
Pirkheimer, and possibly Eobanus. — Burigny (with Revius ?) 
makes Hutten the sole or principal author, if not assisted by 






220 EPISTOL^E OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

Reuchlin, Eobanus, Buschius, Ccesarius, and Nuenar. — Niceron 
attributes them to Hutten, Reuchlin, Nuenar, Crotus and others. 
— Heumannus and Stoll regard Hutten as the chief author, aided 
by various friends, among whom the former particularizes James 
Fuchs. — By Meusel, Crotus is supposed to have conceived the 
plan, and, along with Hutten, to be the principal writer of the 
first part, not unaided, however, by Buschius and Aesticampianus ; 
to the composition of the second, Nuenar, Pirkheimer, Fuchs, and 
perhaps others, contributed their assistance. — Ruhkopf assumes 
as authors, Reuchlin, Hutten, Eobanus, Cordus, Crotus, Bus- , 
chius, &c. — By Scheibe they are held to have been Cro(us y 
Hutten, Buschius, Nuenar, Pirkheimer, and others. — Wachler 
holds Crotus to be the writer of the first volume, Hutten and 
others to be authors of the second. — Dr. Muench, in his ma- 
tured opinion, considers Hutten and Crotus as principals, assisted 
more or less by Eobanus, Aesticampianus, Buschius, Ccesarius, 
Pirkheimer, Angst, Franz von Sickingen, and Fuchs. Muench's 
unexclusive views have found favor with Mayerhoff and Eich- 
stadt. — The former regards Crotus and Angst, exclusively of 
Hutten, as authors of the first book ; and of the second, Hutten, 
Buschius, Crotus, Pirkheimer, perhaps also Fobanus, Ccesarius, 
Angst, Fuchs, Aesticampianus, and Sickingen. — The latter as- 
cribes the authorship of the first book to Crotus, Buschius, and 
Pirkheimer ; and of the second, along with these, to Hutten, 
Eobanus, Angst, Sickingen, and others. To these he finally 
adds Melanchthon. 

The preceding summary, which affords a far more complete 
enumeration than has yet been attempted of the various opinions 
on this question, shows how greatly any adequate criticism of 
the different hypotheses would exceed our limits : — if that indeed 
were worth while ; for the fact of the variation is itself proof 
sufficient, that all opinion is as yet baseless conjecture. Our ob- 
servations ((f)wvdvra avverolat) shall only be in supplement to 
what is already known. Suffice it to say, that as yet there has 
been adduced no evidence of any weight to establish the co-ope- 
ration of other writers in these letters, besides Ulrich von Hutten 
and Crotus Rubianus ; and, independent of the general presump- 
tion against an extensive partnership, there is proof sufficient to 
exclude many of the most likely of those to whom the work has 
been attributed — in particular, Reuchlin, Erasmus, and Eobanus. 
"We propose to show that Hutten, Crotus, and Buschius are 



HUTTEN, CROTUS, BUSCHIUS THEIR AUTHORS.— HUTTEN. 221 

the joint authors ; and this, in regard to the first and last, by- 
evidence not hitherto discovered. 

Crotus. — The share of Crotus is, we conceive, sufficiently es- 
tablished by the anonymous letter addressed to him by a friend 
on his return to the Catholic Church ; and this friend, there is 
every reason to believe, was Justus Jonas. Crotus and Hutten 
were bosom friends from almost childhood to death ; and, as boys, 
they had fled together from the Monastery of Fulda to the Uni- 
versity of Cologne. — The co-operation of Crotus, we assume. 

Hutten. — Doubts have been of late thrown on Hutterfs parti- 
cipation, at least in the first volume of the Epistolse, founded on 
his two letters to Richard Croke, discovered and published by 
C. G. Mueller in 1801. More might be added to what Dr. 
Muench has acutely alleged in disproof of the inference which 
Mueller has deduced from these ;' but we shall not pause to show 
that Hutten could have been a writer of the volume in question ; 
we shall at once demonstrate that he must. 

The middle term of our proof is the Triumphus Capnionis. 
This must, therefore, be vindicated to Hutten. Mohnicke has, 
with considerable ingenuity, recently attempted to invalidate the 
grounds on which Hutten had been hitherto recognized as the 
author of this poem. Added, however, to the former evidence, 
the proof which we shall now adduce appears to us decisive in 
favor of the old opinion. — A letter of Erasmus to Count Nuenar, 
in August 1517, to say nothing of the twenty-fifth letter of the 
first volume of the Epistolee Obscurorum Virorum, proves that 
the Triumphus Capnionis was ready for publication two years 
before, and that at his instance it had been then suppressed. In 
point of fact, it was only printed in 1519. This being under- 
stood, the following coincidence of thought and expression between 
letters of Hutten, all written one, two, or three years before the 
publication of the Triumphus, and the Triumphus itself, can be 
rationally explained only on the hypothesis that both were the 
productions of the same mind. 

In the Letter to Nuenar, April 1518, speaking of the Domini- 

1 For example : — Mueller (with Boehmius — indeed, with all others, as to the former). 
is wrong in regard to two essential points. — 1°, Croke did not first come to Leipsic in 
1515. " Crocus regnat in Academia Lipsiensi, publice docens Grascas literas." says 
Erasmus in a letter to Linacer, of June 1514. (Op. t. iii. p. 136.) — 2°, The first edi- 
tion of the Erasmian Testament appeared in March 1516 (Wetstein Prolcg.), and the 
Letter of Erasmus to Leo. X., relative thereto, is Aug. 1515, not 1516, as alleged by 
Mueller. 



222 EPISTOLjE OBSCTJRORUM VIRORUM. 

cans, and their persecution of true learning and religion, Hutten 
says : — " Q,uodsi me audiat Grermania, quanquam inferre Turcis 
bellum necesse est hoc tempore, prius tamen huic intestino malo 
remedium opponere quam de Asiatica expeditione cogitare ius- 
sero," ets. ; then immediately follows a mention of the famous 
imposture of the Dominicans of Berne, which he calls the " Ber- 
nense Sceliis." In the Preface of the Triumphus, on the other 
hand, immediately after noticing, in the same words, the " Ber- 
nense Scelus," the author adds, in reference also to the Domini- 
cans and their hostility to polite letters and rational theology, 
" Quippe Turcos nego, aut ardentiori dignos odio, aut majori 
oppugnandos opere," ets. — Again, in the same Letter, Hutten 
writes : — "In Italia certe nostri me puduit, quoties de Capnionis 
afflictione, orto cum Italis sermone, illi percontarentur, tantum 
licet in Germania fratribus ?" In the Preface to the Triumphus, 
the author says : — " Memini opprobratam nobis in Italia hominis 
(Hogostrati sc.) insolentiam. Tantum, inquit aliquis, licet in 
Germania fratribus ?" — Again, in the same Letter, Peter Mayer 
and Bartholomew Zehender, are vituperated in conjunction : so 
also in the Triumphus. — Again, in the Letter it is said : — " Pe- 
trus Mayer indoctissimus. . .audax tamen." In the Triumphus, 
the marginal title is " Petrus Mayer indoctissimus" and in the 
text "nemo est ex vulgo indoctior ipso, Audax nemo magis," 
(v. 824). — Again, in the Letter, it is said of " Bartholomaus qui 
Decimator" " simile quid scorpionibus habet." In the Trium- 
phus " Bartholomceus Zehender qui et Decimator," as he is styled 
in the running title, is thus addressed in the text (v. 772), "Mitte 
hue te Vipera." — Again, in his Letter to Gerbellius, August 
1516, Hutten extols Reuchlin and Erasmus, "per eos enim bar- 
bar a esse desinit hate natio {Germania sc.) So in the Triumphus, 
(v. 964), Germania lauds Eeuchlin, per te ne barbara dicar Aut 
rudis effectum est." — Again, in the conclusion of Hutten's letter 
to Pirkheimer (August 1518), we find " accipe laqueum, barba- 
ries," and in the address to the " Theologistae," closing the Tri- 
umphus, we have " proinde laqueum sumite," and " obscuris viris 
laqueum praebens ;" while in both, this expression follows an 
animated picture of the rapid progress of polite literature. — In 
like manner, compare what is said in Hutten's Letter to Croke, 
August 1516, " Sententia non jam de Capnione, sed de nostris 
communibus studiis lata," with the text of the Triumphus (too 
long to quote), of which the marginal summary is, " Capnion 



PROOF OF THEIR THREE AUTHORS; HUTTEN. 223 

communis libertatis assertor," (v. 917).— Also the same series of 
crimes is imputed to the Predicant Friars, and raked up, in the 
same manner, in Hutten's Intercessio pro Capnione, and in two 
places of the Trjumphus (v. 305, ets. and v. 400, ets.) — Though 
less remarkable, we may likewise adduce the expression, " rum- 
pantur ut ilia" applied to the Friars, both in Hutten's Letter to 
Erasmus (July 1517), and Preface to the Nemo, and. in the Tri- 
umphus (v. 378).— The " J acta est alea" in the final address of 
the Triumphus, was subsequently Hutten's peculiar motto in his 
various polemical writings against the court of Rome ; as shortly 
before, it had been first adopted by him in his invectives against 
Duke Ulrich of "Wirtemberg. — The occurrence also of the unusual 
proverbial allusion, " herb am porrigens" in Hutten's Preface to 
the Nemo, and "herbam sumemus" in the conclusion of the Tri- 
umphus, is not without its weight. — It may also be observed, 
that the author of the Triumphus and Hutten agree in always 
using the form Capnion and not Capnio, and in the employment 
(usque nauseam) of the terms Theologistae, Sophistae, Curti- 
sani, &c. 

[Since writing the above, I have met with the very highest, 
testimony to Hutten's authorship of the Triumphus, by his friend. 
Camerarius, in the life of his friend Melanchthon. The words 
are : "Hmjus (Hutteni sc.) est carmen triumphale victoriae Reuch- 
lini, cum pictura" &c. (Sub a. 1514.) All doubt becomes, in 
these circumstances, ridiculous ; and I suppress other internal 
evidence, evidence which I am able to produce.] 

Hutten thus proved the author of the Triumphus Capnionis, 
is, by a similar comparison of that work with the Epistolse Ob- 
scurorum Virorum, shown to be a writer of the first, no less than 
of the second volume of these letters. — The Triumphus, be it 
remembered, was ready for publication before the first volume of 
the Epistolse, in the twenty-fifth letter of which it is, indeed, 
spoken of as already written. Thus, no allusion occurs in the 
Triumphus to the Epistolee ; but the expression, obscuri viri, in 
the peculiar signification of the Epistolse, which is employed at 
least five times in the Triumphus, argues strongly for the com- 
mon origin of both. The following are, however, far more signal 
coincidences. — In the Triumphus (v. 309, ets.) speaking of the 
crimes of the Dominicans, the marginal title bears " Henricus 
Imp. sacramento intoxicatus." In the Epistolse (vol. I., ep. 35J, 
speaking, in like manner, of the crimes of the same order, Magis- 



224 EPISTOLjE obscurorum virorum. 

ter Lyra reports that it is written from Rome, that, as a punish- 
ment for their falsification of Reuchlin's Eyeglass, these friars 
are to be condemned to wear a pair of white spectacles on their 
black cowls (in allusion to the name of that pamphlet, and on 
the title-page/ of which a pair of large black spectacles appears), 
"sicut jam etiam debent pati unum scandalum in celebratione 
missal i, propter intoxicationem alicujus Imperatoris." The allu- 
sion to the poisoning of Henry VII. in both, is remarkable ; but 
the coincidence is carried to its climax, by the employment, in 
each, of so singular, and so unlikely a barbarism (at least in the 
Triumphus) as intoxicatus and intoxicatio — terms unknown even 
in the iron age of Latinity. — An equally striking conformity is 
found between a passage in the Triumphus (v. 269-302), where 
Hutten asserts, firstly, the superiority of Reuchlin's theological 
learning, as contrasted with that of his persecutors, and secondly, 
his equal participation with them in the gift of the Holy Spirit — 
and a passage in the fifth letter of the first volume of the Epistolse 
in which the same attributes are affirmed of the same person, in 
the same relation, and in the same consecution. — Hutten's co- 
operation in the first volume is thus evinced ; and his co-opera- 
tion there, to any extent, is proved by establishing his co-operation 
at all. 

Hutten's participation in the second volume has been less dis- 
puted than his share in the first. Besides the evidence already 
stated by others, we may refer to the intended persecution of 
Erasmus for his edition of the New Testament, as stated in the 
letter of Hutten to Pirkheimer, from Bologna, June 1517, and in 
the forty-ninth letter of the second volume of the Epistolje. — Also 
to the " conjwratio" and " conjuraW (a remarkable expression) in 
favor of Reuchlin against the theologians, in the address appended 
to the Triumphus, and in the ninth letter of the latter part of the 
Epistolee. 

The parallelisms we have hitherto adduced are sufficiently con- 
vincing in themselves ; but they are far more conclusive when 
we consider ; — 1°, how narrow is the sphere within which they 
are found ; and 2°, that similar repetitions are frequent in the 
undoubted works of Hutten. — As to the former ; the letters of 
Hutten, belonging to the period, and the Triumphus, extend only 
to a few pages ; and we defy any one to discover an equal number 
of equally signal coincidences (plagiarism apart) from the works 
of any two authors, allowing him to compare as many volumes 



PROOF OF THEIR THREE AUTHORS; BUSCHIUS. 225 

as, in the present case, we have collated paragraphs. — As to the 
latter ; nothing hut a fear of trespassing on the patience of the 
reader prevents us from adducing the most ample evidence of the 
fact. 

Buschius. — "We now proceed to state the grounds on which we 
contend that there were three principal, or rather, perhaps, three 
exclusive, authors of the work in question ; and that the cele- 
brated Hermann von dem Busche, or, as he is more familiarly- 
known to scholars, Hermannus Buschius, completes, with Hutten 
and Crotus, this memorable triumvirate. 

Ortuinus Grratius, who may be allowed to have had a shrewd 
guess at his tormentors, not only in his Lamentationes Virorum 
Obscurorum, 1 immediately after the appearance of the Epistolse, 
but, what has not been observed, twenty years thereafter in his 
Fasciculus Rerum Expetendarum* asserts that the Epistolse were 
the work of several authors, and states, even in the former, that 
their names were known. — Erasmus, who enjoyed the best oppor- 
tunities of information, 3 and in circumstances under which it was 
no longer a point of delicacy to dissemble his knowledge, asserts 
that the authors of the Epistolse were three. " Equidem non 

1 P. 116, ed. 1649. It has been doubted whether Ortuinus be the real author of the 
Lamentationes, and whether that silly rejoinder be the work of an Anti-Reuchlinist at 
all. The affirmative we could fully establish by passages from the works of Hutten 
and Erasmus which have been wholly overlooked ; — but it is not worth while. 

2 T. I., p. 479 (Brown's edition). Dr. Muench and others conceive, that this work is 
palpably pseudonymous. He could hardly have read what Clement (Bibl. Cur. t. viii. p. 
244, ets.) has said upon this subject ; and in addition to the observations of that acute 
bibliographer we may notice, that the Fasciculus is not hostile to Catholicism ; its 
purport is only to maintain that for which the Universities in general, and Paris and 
Cologne in particular, had always strenuously contended — that a Council was para- 
mount to the Pope, and that a council was the only mean, at that juncture, of recon- 
ciling the dissensions in religion. Ortuinus's zeal in the cause was probably any 
thing but allayed by the papal decision in the case of Reuchlin. N.B. The marginal 
notes in the English edition are, for the greater part, by the protectant editor ; an 
ignorance of this may have occasioned the misapprehension. 

3 He was the familiar friend of the whole circle of those who either wrote the work, 
or knew by whom it was written — of Hutten, Crotus, Buschius, Nuenar, Caesarius, 
Pirkheimer, Eobanus, Angst, Stromer, &c. Some of the Epistolaa were even commu- 
nicated to him before publication, and the design and execution vehemently applauded. 
He himself expressly acknowledges one, attributed to Hutten ; and Justus Jonas, his 
friend, asserts that they were copied by him, and dispatched to his correspondents, 
committed to memory, and recited in company. Nay, they are said to have cured an 
imposthume on his face by the laughter they excited. He was thus manifestly not 
only able to discover the history of the composition, but strongly interested in the dis- 
covery. The selfishness and caution of his own character are slyly hit off in the 
second volume — " Erasmus est homo pro se ;" and we should be disposed to attribute 
the clamor of his subsequent disapprobation to personal pique, as much, at least, as 
to virtuous indignation, or even timidity. 

P 



226 EPISTOLiE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

ignorabara auctores. Nam tres fuisse fefebantur. In nenrinem 
derivavi suspicionem." l This testimony is at once the most 
cogent and most articulate that exists ; so strong is it, that we 
at once accept it, even against the presumption that an effusion 
of so singular a character, of such uniform excellence, and rising 
so transcendently above the numerous attempts at imitation, could 
have emanated only from a single genius. To suppose the co- 
operation of a plurality of minds, each endowed with the rare 
ability necessary for such a work, is in itself improbable, and the 
improbability rises in a geometrical ratio to the number of such 
minds which the hypothesis assumes. In the present case, the 
weight of special evidence in favor of plurality is sufficient to 
counterbalance, to a certain extent, the general presumption in 
favor of unity. But gratuitously to postulate, as has been so 
frequently done, all and sundry not disinclined to Reuchlin, to 
have been able to write, and actually to have assisted in writing 
this masterpiece of wit, is of all absurdities the greatest. The 
law of parsimony is overcome by the irrecusable testimony of 
Ortuinus and Erasmus, so far as to compel us to admit a plural- 
ity of authors, and that to the amount of three ; but philosophical 
presumption, and historical evidence, combine in exploding the 
supposition of a greater number. 

Of these three authors, two are already found. — We could 
prove, we think, by exclusion, that no other, besides Buschius, 
was at all likely to have been the third. But as this negative 
would be tedious, we shall only attempt the positive, by showing 
that every circumstance concurs in pointing out that distinguished 
scholar as the colleague of Hutten and Crotus. The name of 
Buschius has once and again been mentioned, among the other 
wellwishers of Reuchlin, as a possible author of this satire ; but 
while no evidence has yet been led, to show that his participation 
in that work was probable, grounds have been advanced, and 
still remain unanswered, which would prove this participation to 
have been impossible. 

We must therefore refute, as a preliminary, this alleged im- 
possibility. — "Hamelmann," says Meiners, whose authority on 
this question is deservedly of the highest, "believes that Hermann 
von dem Busche had a share in the Epistolse Obscurorum Viro- 
rum. This supposition is contradicted by the chronology of these 
letters, which were written and printed previously to the return 

1 Spongia adv. asp. Hutteni (Opera, t. x. c. 1640, ed. Clerici). 



PROOF OF THEIR THREE AUTHORS; BUSCHIUS. 227 

of Von dem Busche to Germany."- This objection, of which 
Muench was not aware, is established on Hamelmann's biography 
of Buschius ; and, if true, it would be decisive. "We can prove, 
however, that Buschius was not only in Germany, but resident 
at Cologne for a considerable time previous to the printing of 
the first volume of the Epistolce, and continued to reside there, 
until about the date of the publication of the second. 2, — Buschius 
was teaching in the university of Cologne, soon after the publi- 
cation of the Praenotamenta of Ortuinus, in 1514, as is proved by 
the letter of Magister Hipp, the 17th in the first volume of the 
Epistolae. In the 19th letter of the second volume, Magister 
Schlauraff, at the commencement of his peregrination, leaves 
Buschius in Rostoch, but at its termination finds him teaching in 
Cologne ; while the 46th of the same volume speaks of him as 
then (i. e. 1516) a rival of Ortuinus in that school. Grlareanus 
in his Epistle to Reuchlin, dated from Cologne, January 1514, 
speaks of Buschius as resident in that city. (111. Vir. Ep. ad 
Reuchl. X iii.) The letter of Buschius himself to Reuchlin, writ- 
ten in October, "from his own house in Cologne," is checked by 
the events to which it alludes to the year 1515 (Ibid. Y i.) ; and, 
finally, we find him addressing to Erasmus a poetical congratu- 
lation on his entry into that city in 1516 (Erasmi Opera III. c. 
198 and c. 1578, ed. Clerici.) Buschius could not thus have 
left Cologne, before the middle or end of the year 1516 (his ab- 
sentation at that juncture becomes significant) ; and when recall- 
ed from England to Cologne in 1517, by Count Nuenar, Dean of 
the Canonical Chapter, that nobleman, with all his influence, was 
unable to support him against the hostility of the Monks and 
Magistri Nostri, Hoogstraten, Ortuinus and Co., to whom, if a 
known or suspected contributor to the Epistolae, he would now 
have become more than ever obnoxious. Erasmus found him at 
Spires in 1518. — So far, therefore, from being placed beyond the 
sphere of co-operation during the concoction of the Epistolae, he 
was for the whole period at its very centre. 

But his participation is not simply possible — it is highly pro- 
bable. 

In the first place, his talents were not only of the highest order, 

1 Lebensbesc.hr. ber. Maenner, II. p. 380. 

2 Meiners, it may be observed, makes the appearance of the first volume of the 
Epistolse a year too late. This was in 1515, or, at latest, in the beginning of 1516 ; 
while the second volume was published toward the end of 1516, or early in 1517. 



228 EPISTOL^l OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

and his command over the Latin tongue in all its applications 
almost unequaled, hut his genius and character in strict analogy 
with the work in question. The Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum 
are always bitterly satirical, and never scrupulously decent. 1 The 
writings of Buschius — his (E strum, his Epistola pro Reuchlino, 
his Concio ad Clerum Coloniensem, his Valium Humanitatis, to 
say nothing of others — are just a series of satires, and satires of 
precisely the same tendency as that pasquil. The Vallum, by 
which he is now best known to scholars, Erasmus prevailed on 
him to soften down ; it still remains sufficiently caustic. His 
epigrams show that, in his writings, he did not pique himself on 
modesty ; while the exhortation of the worthy Abbot Trithemius, 
" ut ita viveret ne moribus destrueret eruditionem," proves that 
he was no rigorist in conduct. 

In the second place, in thus maintaining the cause of Reuchlin 
he was most effectually maintaining his own. 

In the third place, Ortuinus Gratius, to whom the Epistolae 
Virorum Obscurorum are addressed, is the principal victim of 
this satire, though not a prominent enemy of Reuchlin — far less 
of Hutten and Crotus. But he was the literary opponent, and 
personal foe of Buschius. Westphalians by birth, Ortuinus and 
Buschius were countrymen ; they had also been schoolfellows at 
Daventer, under the celebrated Hegius. But as they were not 
allies, their early connection made them only the more bitter 
adversaries. Buschius, the champion of scholastic reform, was 
opposed by Ortuinus, with no sincerity of conviction, but all the 
vehemence of personal animosity, in his endeavors to exterminate 
the ancient grammars, which, having for ages perpetuated 
barbarism in the schools and universities, were now loathed as 
philological abominations by the restorers of ancient learning. 
Buschius had thus not only general reasons to contemn Ortuinus, 
as a renegade from the cause of illumination, but private motives 
to hate him as a hypocritical and malevolent enemy. The attack 
of Ortuinus is accordingly keenly retorted by Buschius in the 
preface to his second edition of Donatus, as it is also ridiculed in 

1 This excludes Eobanus Hessus, of whom we know from Erasmus, Joachim Came- 
rarius, and Melchior Adamus (to say nothing of the negative evidence of his own 
writings), that he was morbidly averse from satire and obscenity. Muench, who com- 
prises Eobanus (he has it uniformly Erban) in his all-comprehensive hypothesis of 
authorship, makes him writer of the tract De Fide Meretricum. He was not ; and if 
he were, the author of that wretched twaddle was certainly no author of the Epistolae 
Obscurorum Virorum. 



PROOF OF THEIR THREE AUTHORS; BUSCHIUS. 229 

the 9th and 32d letters of the first volume of the Epistolse Ob- 
scurorum Virorum. 

In the fourth place, the scandal about the family and parent- 
age of Ortuinus (and he is the only one of the Obscure whose 
birth is satirized), seems to indicate the information of a country- 
man ; and with every allowance for exaggeration, still even the 
contradictions of his sacerdotal filiation, which Ortuinus found 
it necessary to publish in his various works subsequent to the 
Epistolse, preserve always a suspicious silence touching his 
mother. 

In the fifth place, Buschius was the open and strenuous parti- 
san of Reuchlin, in whose cause he published, along with Nuenar 
and Hutten, a truculent invective against the Apologia of Hoog- 
straten. He is always, indeed, found enumerated among the 
most active and prominent of the Reuchlinists. In evidence of 
this, we regret that we can not quote from the Epistolse illus- 
trium Virorum ad Reuchlinum, the letters of Nuenar (T iii.), of 
Grlareanus (X iii.), and of Eobanus (Y iii.), and from the Epis- 
tolse Obscurorum Virorum, the 59th letter of the second volume ; 
in all of which, the mention made of Buschius is on various 
accounts remarkable. 

In the sixth place, Buschius was also the intimate friend of 
Crotus and Hutten ; and among the letters to which we last 
referred, those of Nuenar and Eobanus significantly notice his 
co-operation in aid of Reuchlin with these indubitable authors of 
the work in question. His attachment to Hutten was so strong, 
that it lost him, in the end, the friendship of his schoolfellow 
Erasmus. 

In the seventh place, Cologne and Leipsic are the universities 
prominently held up to ridicule throughout the Epistolae. We 
see why, in the cause of Reuchlin, the Magistri Nostri of Cologne 
should be especial objects of attack; — but why those of Leipsic? 
Leipsic was not even one of the universities which had concurred 
with Cologne in condemning the Augenspiegel of Reuchlin. 
With the Leipsic regents, neither Hutten nor Crotus had any 
collision; nor, as far as we are aware, any intercourse. They 
are assailed, however, with a perseverance and acrimony betray- 
ing personal rancor, and with a minuteness of information com- 
petent only to one who had been long resident among them. 
The problem is at once solved, if we admit the participation of 
Buschius. This scholar had grievous injuries to avenge, not onlv 



230 EPISTOLJE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

on the obscurants of Cologne, but on those of Leipsio. The 
influence of Hoogstraten, Tungern, and their adherents, had 
banished him from Cologne about the year 1500 ; and on both 
his subsequent returns to that University, he remained at open 
war with its Theologians and "Artists." 1 After his first expul- 
sion from Cologne, he had, for six years, taught in Leipsic with 
the greatest reputation ; but the jealousy of the barbarians being 
roused by the preponderance which he had given to the study of 
polite letters, he was constrained by their vexations to abandon 
that university in 1510, and the extrusion of his friend Aesticam- 
pianus was adjourned only until the following year. The letter 
of Magister Hipp, in the first volume of the Epistolse (Ep. 17), 
in which the persecution of Aesticampianus by the Leipsic mas- 
ters is minutely described, and that of Buschius wholly over- 
past, betrays the hand of Buschius himself. Throughout these 
letters, indeed, the notices of Von dem Busche, as of Hutten 
and Crotus, harmonize completely with the hypothesis of author- 
ship. 

But, in the eighth place, we are not altogether left to general 
probabilities. The single letter of Buschius to Reuchlin, com- 
pared with some of the Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum, supplies 
conformities, that go far of themselves to establish an identity of 
authors. (Ep. ad Reuchl. L ii. Y.) Among other parallelisms, 
compare, in the former, the threat of the Anti-Reuchlinists, in 
the event of the Pope deciding against them, to effect a schism 
in the Church, with the same in the 57th Epistle of the second 
volume of the latter ; — their menace, in the former, of appealing 
to a Council, with the same in the 12th Epistle of the first volume 
of the latter ; and their disparagement of the Pope, and a papal 
sentence, in the former, with the same in the 11th and 12th 
Epistles of the first volume of the latter. 

We do not pretend that the circumstantial evidence now ad- 
duced amounts to absolute certainty. It affords, however, the 
highest probability ; and is at least sufficient, in the present state 
of the question, to vindicate against every other competitor, the 
claim of Buschius to the third place in the triumvirate to whom 
the Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum are to be ascribed. 

It now remains to say a few words on Dr. Muench's perform- 
ances as editor.. — A satisfactory edition of the Epistolse Obscuro- 

1 How fond Buschius was of every joke against Hoogstraten, maybe seen from his 
correspondence with Eradmus.—^lErasifMi opera, t. iii. ec 1683, I6S3.) 



CHARACTER OF MUENCH'S EDITION. 231 

rum Virorum required : 1°, A history of the circumstances which 
determined the appearance and character of the satire, including 
an inquiry into its authors ; 2°, A critical discussion of the vari- 
ous editions of the work ; 3°, A correct text founded on a colla- 
tion of all the original editions, the omissions, interpolations, and 
variations of each being distinguished ; and, 4°, A commentary 
on the frequent allusions to things and persons requiring expla- 
nation. 

In regard to the first of these conditions, Dr. Muench has added 
nothing — and not a little was wanting. To explain the general 
relations of the satire, it was not sufficient to narrate the steps 
of the Reuchlinian process as an isolated event ; nor in compiling 
this narrative (for it shows no original research), has he even 
copied his predecessors without inaccuracy. His disquisition 
touching the origin of the work, from his omission of all refer- 
ences, can only be understood by those who are already conver- 
sant with the discussion ; his statement of the different opinions 
in regard to the authorship, is at second hand, and very incom- 
plete ; and his own hypothesis on the subject good for nothing. 

In regard to the second condition, Dr. Muench has committed 
a momentous blunder relative to the appendix of seven, or more 
properly six, letters which were added to the third edition of the 
first volumf — an edition which probably appeared within a year 
after the first edition of the first volume, and almost certainly 
before the publication of the second volume. With Panzer (whom 
he makes of Leipsic !) and Ebert — nay even with what he him- 
self has transcribed from these bibliographers, before his eyes, 
his blunder is inconceivable. From a note to the first of these 
additional letters (p. 146), compared with his account of the 
fourth edition, that of 1556 (p. 70), he evidently imagines these 
six letters to have been first published and appended in that 
edition along with the Epistola imperterriti Fratris, &c. " The 
following letters," he says, " are added only in the later edi- 
tions, and their author, as well as the occasion of their compo- 
sition, unknown. In all probability they were the work of the 
still living authors of the first and second volumes." — Some lesser 
errors under this head we overpass, as Muench is here only a 
copyist. 

The third condition, though of primary importance, and com- 
paratively easy, our author has not fulfilled. He professes to 
have printed the first volume from its second edition ;• he does 



232 EPISTOLiE OBSCUfLORUM VIRORUM. 

not inform us from what edition he printed the second volume, 
or the appendix to the first. He has instituted no collation of the 
original editions : and nothing can exceed the negligence, we 
shall not say ignorance, which even this uncollated text displays. 
It was the primary duty of an editor to have furnished a text, 
purified at least from the monstrous typographical errors with 
which all former editions abound. The present edition only adds 
new blunders to the old. 1 These errata we should refer to a 
culpable negligence, were it not that Dr. Muench is occasionally 
guilty of blunders, which can only be explained by a defective 
scholarship, and an ignorance of literary history. Thus, in his 
introduction (pp. 55, 56), he repeatedly adduces a passage from 
one of Hutten's letters, beginning rumpantur utilia, though every 
schoolboy would at once read rumpantur ut ilia. 

To the accomplishment of the fourth condition, Dr. Muench 
has contributed little or nothing. No work more required, as , 
none better deserved, a commentary, than the Epistolge. Our 
editor has, however, attempted no illustration of the now obscure 
allusions with which they every where abound — no difficult un- 
dertaking to one versed in the scholastic philosophy, and the 
general literature of the period ; but the biographical notices he 
has ventured to append, of a very few of the persons mentioned 
in the text, significantly prove his utter incompetency to the task. 
These meagre notices are gleaned from the most vulgar sources, 
and one or two examples will afford a sufficient sample of their 
inaccuracy. 

The celebrated poet, Joannes Baptista (Hispaniolus, Spagnoli) 
Mantuanus, Greneral of the Carmelites, who died in March 1516, a 
he mistakes, and in the very face of the Epistoite, for the obscure 
physician, Baptista Fiera (he writes it Finra) Mantuanus, who 
died at a much later period. 

1 Dipping here and there at random, we notice : p. 158, Wesatio for Wcsalio, an 
old and important erratum ; p. 192, positionem for pi tionem, old error ; p. 132, Stulteti 
for Scultcti, ditto ; p. 133, succo taphaniana drachmas iii., for succo raphani ana drachmas 
iii. ; p. 88, nostrum. Pctrum for nostrum, P., old error; p. 98, quot libcta for quod- 
libcta ; p. 138, pracputiati for non praeputiati ; ibid., non praepzitiati for praeputiati, olil 
error ; p. 139. fuit promolus for fui promotus, old error ; p. 203, cum contra semel ar 
ticulos habuit Pctrum, &c, for c. h. s. a. c. P.; p. 204, parcm for patrem ; p. 137, 
indoxicationcm for intoxicationem ; pp. 162, 163, solarium for salarium, old error, &c, 
&c. 

2 The allusion to the death of Mantuanus, in the twelfth letter of the second vo- 
lume of the Epistolsc, thus checks, to a certain point, the date of its composition, and 
would prove that it was written in Italy, consequently by Hutten. This, which has 
not been observed, is important. 






CHARACTER OF MUENCH'S EDITION. 233 

Every tyro in the literary history of the middle ages, and of 
the revival of letters, is familiar with the name, at least, of Alex- 
ander de Villa Dei or Dolensis, whose Latin Grammar, the Doc- 
trinale Puerorum, reigned omnipotent throughout the schools of 
Europe, from the "beginning of the 13th to the beginning of the 
16th century. The struggle for its expulsion was one of the 
most prominent events in the history of the restoration of classical 
studies in Germany ; and the Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum are 
full of allusions to the contest. Yet Dr. Muench knows nothing 
of Alexander. " Gallus Alexander," says he, "as it appears, an 
able grammarian of the fifteenth century, an experienced casuist,' 1 '' 
&c. — all utterly wrong, even to the name. 

Of the notorious Wigand Wirt, Dr. Muench states that he was 
one of the Dominicans executed at Berne, for the celebrated im- 
posture, in 1509. Though probably the deviser of that fraud, he 
was not among its victims ; and had Dr. Muench read the Epis- 
tolse he edits, with the least attention, he would have seen that 
Wigand is in them accused of being the real author of the Sturm- 
g-lock (Alarum), written against Reuchlin, in 1514, and that he 
is living in 1516. (Yol. I. App. Ep. 6.) 

Our editor confounds Bartholomew Zehender or Decimator of 
Mentz, with Bartholomeeus Coloniensis of Minden. The former 
was one of the most ignorant and intolerant of the Anti-Reuch- 
linists ; the latter, the scholar of Hegius, the friend of Erasmus 
(who styles him, vir eruditions singular i), and the ally of Bus- 
chius, Aesticampianus, and Ceesarius, had been banished from 
his native city, for his exertions in the cause of classical Latinity, 
by the persecutors of Reuchlin themselves. 

What we have said will suffice to show that these letters still 
await their editor. Let the Germans beware. The work is of 
European interest : and, if they are not on the alert, the Epis- 
tolse Obscurorum Virorum may, like the poems of Lotichius, find 
a foreign commentator. 1 

1 Another edition of these Epistles, by Rotermund, we see announced in the I ( eipsic 
Mass-Catalogue for Easter 1830 ; and have been disappointed in not obtaining it for 
this article. The editor, whom we know only as author of the Supplement to 
Joecher's Biographical Lexicon, professes, in the title, to give merely a reprint of the 
London edition of 1710 (i. e. a text of no authority, and swarming with typographical 
blunders,) a preface explanatory of the origin of the satire, and biographical notices of 
the persons mentioned in it. As there seems no attempt at a commentary, we do not 
surmise that Rotermund has performed more in Latin [but in German it is,] than 
Muench in German ; and the small price shows that there can be little added to the 
text. — [Having now seen this edition, the presumptive opinion need not be withdrawn 



234 EPISTOLiE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

— The only other attempt at an illustration of this satire of which I am aware, since 
this article was written, is that of Professor Eichstadt, who, in 1831 and the follow- 
ing years, on academical occasions, published at Jena his Commentationes De Poesi 
Culinaria, of which I possess four. They are explanatory of the persons alluded to 
in one of the Epistola? ; to wit, the Carmen Rilhmicale Magistri Philippi Schlauraff, 
quod compilavit et comportavit, quando fuit Cursor in Thcologia, et ambulavil per totam 
Almaniam supcriorem. — Twenty years have now elapsed since the preceding article 
was written, and the Germans have not yet given to the world even a critical text of 
their great national satire. 

Eobanus Hessus, referred to in note t, p- 215, is I see an error for Crotus Rubianus. 
But the one letter of Eobanus in the Illustrium Virorum Epistolse ad Reuchlinum, 
(sig. Y. ii. sq.) is curious in itself; and still more, as it is in answer to the following 
letter of Reuchlin, the autograph of which came into my possession several years after 
the date of the preceding article, and now appears for the first time. This autograph 
is a good specimen of the calligraphy for which Reuchlin was noted ; and of which a 
fac-simile is to be found, among others, in Effner's " Doctor Martin Luther," (ii. 205) 
This letter is of some historical importance. 

"Helio Eobano Hesso, 
politioris literature pr.3sceptori erdifordi.de, amico suo quam observandis 

simo. ad manus. 

S. D. P. Au tu non videas, Hasse, mecum simul, quam istse crudeles picse men 
dica?, istae Harpyia3 cyanoleucE (non illi Fratres Areales qui Romuli cetate religiosi 
erant, sed hi Fratres Dorninicales qui nostro aevo a religione labascunt.) indefessa 
bella gerant, ut mihi vix concedatur spirare ac aliquando vires resumere. Et tu 
moleste quereris, me tuis ad me datis Uteris in hoc tam laborioso tempore nihil re- 
spondisse ! 

TVistius haud Mis rnonstrum, nee savior ulla 

Pestis. [v"irg.] 

Quotidie calamum agitant meum, et mentem, pene defatigato mihi, alio impellunt, ut 
melioribus Uteris incumbere nequeam. Tu potes in Helicone choreas ducere, Ascrffio- 
que calamo imitari Musarum voluptates. At mihi non est integrum inter tot crabrones 
consusurrare, aut quippiam, vel serium et rigidius Cantone, meditari. Ergo nisi te 
amen, invidebo illi tuaa prosperitati, et mei miserebor : quod tu, princeps rei literarias 
nobilissimus, careas semulis ; cum non modo tam illustres generosi animi tui conatus, 
quos in Heroidibus ostentas, verum etiam nomen ipsum tuum, tanta? majestatis signa- 
culum, ad invidiam multos concitare debuerat (ut est nunc hominum multorum con- 
ditio, senescente mundo). Ephesiis enirn Hessen, idem quod Rex Latinis, dicitur, 
Callimacho poeta Cyrenseo teste ; qui Jovem, non sorte lectum esse Regem Deorum 
asserit, sed operibus manuum, in Hymno ad Jovem hoc utens carmine : — 

Ov ere Qewv iacnjva [vulgo, ecrcrJjz'a] iraKoi, decrav, epya de ^eipaiv. 

Ubi Hessena summum regem designat. [Chald. Hasin, potens.] Inter enim setatis 
tua; Christianos poetas, ipse Rex es ; qui scribendis versibus, quodam potentatu et 
ingenii dominio eminentiore, plus ctsteris metro imperas, et syllabas quasque ad regu- 
lam regis. Gratulor itaque Universitati Erdifordia?, quod te tali clarescunt viro. Nee 
me in odium ejus, quominus de suo splendore ac laudis amplitudine gaudeam, unquam 
concitabunt quidam, male de me homines meriti, tecum habitantes ; qui tametsi 
Theologiam profitentur, tamen in condemnando mea, Dei vocera non sunt sequuti— 
Adam ubi es ? Ipsi autem illi inter pejores, non dico boni, sed minus mali fuerunt. 
Quanquam omnes, cum suis complicibus, qui non vident trabem in oculo suo, expecta- 
bunt Dei judicium dicentis : — In quo judicio judicavcritis, judicabimini ; Nolite condem- 
nare, et non condemnabimini. Certum hoc est : non mentitur Deus. Tu vero, quan- 
quam omnium bellorum exitus incerti sunt, tamen de mea causa spem tibi concipe. 
quod has volucres prorsus superabo. Sententiam diffinitivam cum executione obtinui. 
Sed adversarii, victoriam meam putantes revera suam infamiam, omni diligentia invo- 
caverunt Francorum Regem. Mirum, quod non [jam] Persarum summum item pon- 



POEMS OF EOBANUS. 235 

tificem [atque] alios principes exorcisarunt, ut Sententiam Apostolicam labefactarent. 
Quapropter ego, licet victor, illos Romara citavi. Ut ab hoc exemplo discere potes ! 
Unde paulisper suspende chelyn, dum conclamatum fuerit. Interea tamen, si me 
amas, adapta citharam et Mtisis materiam colliga. — JEque foeliciter vale. 

E Stutgardia, vii Kal. Novembres, Anno m.d.xiiii. 

Joannes Reuchlin Phoecen. LL.D. 

In fervente ad Vindictam Iambo, non erts solus neque alter." 

Reuchlin's reference to the language of the Ephesians is explained by the Etymolo- 
gicon Magnum (sub voce.) 

Eobanus, in his answer, says, inter alia, that' he had shown this letter to sundry 
good men in Erfurt, admirers of Reuchlin, and enemies of the hostile faction, and to 
some even of the Theological Faculty (who had condemned the Eyeglass without 
interrogating its author.) "Sunt enim et hie quoque boni et mali; ipsi autem illi, 
quos tu, non lonos sed inter pejores minus malos, appellas, pcenitere videntur, quod 
Coloniensibus asinis et circumforaneis nugivendis ipsi decepti potius quam instructi, 
suffragium addiderunt." 

Eobanus signalises " Hut 'ten, Buschius, and Crotus," as the three first of the trum- 
peters of Reuchlin's victory.] 

[ The following appears as an Addendum in the English Edition. It is here inserted in its proper place- 
— Am. Pub.] 

The preceding letter, though I always prized it as exceedingly curious, is, I find, 
far more curious than I had ever surmised. — Helms Eobanus Hessus (to say nothing 
more of Reuchlin) is known to all versed in the history of the Restoration of Letters, 
and history of the Reformation of the Church, as one of the most remarkable characters 
of that remarkable period. He was the admired of Erasmus and of Luther, the bosom 
friend of Hutten, Crotus, Buschius, Melanchthon, and Camerarius, indeed, more or 
less intimately connected with almost all the many men of note by whom Germany, 
during the first half of the sixteenth century, was so conspicuously illustrated. In an 
age — in a country where Latin so totally superseded the vernacular, Eobanus was the 
Poet of the Reformation, and, with Melanchthon and Camerarius, its chief Literator. 
He is called by Erasmus the Ovid, by Camerarius the Homer, of Germany ; and his 
translation of the Psalter was even more popular than his Homeric version, or his 
Ovidian imitations. Of his Psalms, there are known more than forty editions. As a 
poet, Eobanus remained during his life unapproached in Germany ; and it was not till 
after his death, that Lotichius, and long after it, that Balde, came to share with, if not 
to wrest from, him the Elegiac and the Lyric laurels. 

But why was he called the King 1 — In reading the Letters of Eobanus, of which 
we have two collections, by his two friends, Camerarius and Draco, in reading the 
Letters of his friends Camerarius and Melanchthon — and in reading the Life of Eoba- 
nus by Camerarius (to say nothing of the many subsequent biographers of the poet), 
we encounter perpetual allusions to the title of King ; the title, in fact, which Eobanus 
assumed himself (but, in joke, as "Rex Stultorum") and with which he was almost 
uniformly decorated by his more intimate correspondents. He sometimes dates his 
epistles, indeed, " ex Regia Egestosa ;" and his Queen, he once informs a correspond- 
ent, had ceased to amplify the royal family — " non quia vetula sit, sed quia nolit ; dicit 
enim satis Regulorum." The royal pair had only a single Princess (Reginula). Thus 
Luther (in 1530), sending to the poetic translator of the Psalms his own humbler prose 
German version of the cxviii., writes : — " Nam poetae nolo ullo modo comparari, sicut 
nee debeo nee possum. Tu enim rex poetarum, et poeta regum, seu, rectius dicam, 
regius poeta et poeticus rex es, qui regium ilium poetam sic pulchre refers in peregrina 
sibi lingua." (De Wette, iv. 138). Eobanus, too, had received the royal title long 
before he was recognized, in then temulent Germany, as the very Prince of Topers ; 
his only rival in this supremacy being, as we are informed by Melanchthon, the poet's 
patron and territorial liege-lord, the magnanimous Landgrave of Hesse. So much I 
knew. — A few days, however, after the preceding letter of Reuchlin had been printed, 
in looking, for another matter, through the Farragines Operum of Eobanus, I stumbled 
on a poem, previously overlooked, articulately explaining the origin of the poet's regal 



236 EPISTOLjE OBSCURORUM VIRORUM. 

style ; and found, that this same letter constituted the very imperial patent of creation, 
and was not, as I had deemed it, one merely among the many ordinary recognitions of 
his royal rank. I have likewise subsequently observed, that Camerarius in his Life of 
Eobanus (followed by Adamus and others), attributes to Reuchlin the coronation of 
Eobanus. — Referring again to the letter of Eobanus in answer to Reuchlin's, I find 
the following allusion to the matter in question : — " Ego autem quod reliquum est, mi 
Reftchline, puto me tibi permagnam debere gratiam, et certe non fallor, quod genti 
meae tarn antiquum, et quasi ex chao, attuleris prfficonium, et regem me, alludente 
voce gentilicia, salutas. Rex igitur sum ego, sed admodum parvo contentus regno. 
Quanto tu asseris, id esset vel Imperatori nimium." — The verses (which here follow), 
are from the second book of the Sylvce ; and though the Farragines were first published 
during the life of the poet (1539), they are not accurately printed. 

" Cur vocetur REX. 
Non ego crediderim citius, prodisse poetam 

Quern sterilis raptum praedicat Ascra senem ; 
Quam mihi jamdudum Phoebaeia signa ferenti, 

Venit adoptato nomine Regis honor. 
Hoc tamen unde feram, qua manet origine nonem, 

Stultum et ridiculum dicere pene fuit. 
Scripsimus exiguo vulgata poemata versu, 

Scripta notis populo Lypsia clara dedit. 1 
Legerat hsec gentis Reuchlinus fama Suevae, 

Et dixit : — " Regis nomen habere potes. 
Inter enim quoscunque ferunt tua secula vates, 

Rex es, et est ratio nominis inde tui : 
Nam Graii Regem dicunt Hesscna poets, 

Esse ita te Regem, nomine reque doces ; 
Et velut exerces agnatum in carmina regnum, 

Recta stat in versu syllaba queeque tuo." 2 
Hoc scriptum 3 excipiunt atque amplexantur amici. 

Et Regem clamant omnibus esse locis. 
Ipse ego quandoquidem nee publica scripta negare, 

Nee poteram charis obstruere ora viris : 
" Rex," inquam, " Rex vester ero, quando ista necesse est 

Tradita militia nomina ferre mese. 
Verum alios titulos, nee inepta insignia sumam, 

Moria jamdudum cognita tota mihi est. 4 
Vidimus Utopia? latissima regna superbae. 5 

Tecta Lucernarum sunt peragrata mihi. 6 
Fortunata meo lustrata est Insula cursu, 

Dulcia ubi aeterno flumine mella fluunt, 
Qua viret ambrosia? succus, qua rupibus altis 

Nectara, ut e coelo, praacipitata cadunt. 7 
Gentis Hyperborese felicem vidimus oram, 

Qua neque mors hominum nee mala fata premunt, 
Qua stant perpetuam facientia stagna juventam, 

Qua licet in ccelum scandere quando libet. 8 

i The first edition of the Heroides CkristiancBVTas published at Leipsic, in 1514, Eobanus being then 
in his twenty-fifth year. — Does Eobanus in the first two verses refer to a recognition by him of Reuch- 
lin's poetical genius in 1514 ? Reuchlin's Scenica Progymnasmata were republished, in that year, at 
Leipsic ; and probably the letter of Eobanus to Reuchlin, to which the latter in his epistle here printed 
alludes, contained an acknowledgment to the effect, with special reference to that famous comedy. 
Reuchlin's coronation of Eobanus was thus only a reciprocity for Eobanus's laureation of Reuchlin. 

2 This is a very accurate abstract of Reuchlin's letter, here printed from the autograph, and for the 
first time. 

3 Thus in a writing, and not in conversation. 

* Erasmus, by his Encomium Moria, had, in a certain sort, brought Folly into fashion. 

5 See the Utopia of Sir Thomas More. 

6 Lucian's True History (i. 29,) ? 

7 The Fortunate Islands, or Islands of the Blessed, need no illustration. 
6 He refers principally to Pindar, (Pyth. x. 57, sq.) 



POEM OF EOBANUS. 237 

Hjbc per et haec circum pulcherrima regna volentem, 

Moria me fida duxit arnica manu ; 
Cumque peragrarim tot tantaque regna, licebit 

Stultitiae titulos sumere jure mihi. 
Musica legitimum sumant in carmina regnum, 

Qui sunt Maeonidae, Virgiliique super ; 
Quam mihi sint nullae scribenda in carmina vires 

Sentio, et ingenium metior inde meum. 
Vos, quia me Regem facitis, sinite esse tyrannum, 

Stultitiae haud aliud me diadema movet." 
Sic ego. — Paruerant illi tam vera monenti, 

Tradentes manibus Regia sceptra meis. 
Fecerit ergo licet Reuchlinia littera Regem, 

Non tamen hoc tantum contulit imperium. 
Plurima Capnioni subscribit turba : — Quid inde ? 

Si rem complebunt nomina, Caesar ero." 



II.-ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 
IN REFERENCE TO CULLEN. 1 



(July, 1832.) 



An Account of the Life, Lectures, and Writings of William 
Cullen, M.D., Professor of the Practice of Physic in the Uni- 
versity of Edinburgh. By John Thomson, M.D., Professor of 
Medicine and General Pathology in the University of Edinburgh. 
Vol. I. 8vo. Edinburgh: 1832. 



l &* 



"We are much gratified by the appearance of the present work. 
Cullen is one of those illustrious minds by whom Scotland, during 
the past century, was raised from comparative insignificance to 
the very highest rank in literature and science. In no depart- 
ment of intellectual activity has Scotland been more prolific of 
distinguished talent, than in medicine ; and as a medical philoso- 
pher the name of Cullen stands, in his native country, pre-emi- 
nent and alone. It would be difficult indeed to find in any nation 
an individual who displayed a rarer assemblage of the highest 
qualities of a physician. The characters of his genius were prom- 
inent, but in just accordance with each other. His erudition 
was extensive, yet it never shackled the independent vigor of his 
mind ; while, on the other hand, no love of originality made him 
overlook or disparage the labors of his predecessors. His capacity 
of speculation was strong, but counterbalanced by an equal 
power of observation ; his imagination, though lively, was broken 
in as a useful auxiliary to a still more energetic reason. The 
circumstances under which his mind was cultivated, were also 
conducive to its full and harmonious evolution. His education 
was left sufficiently to himself to determine his faculties to a 

1 [This article, placed under the head of Literature, requires some indulgence ; I 
could not give it a class for itself, and it falls at least more naturally under this, than 
Under either of the other heads.] 



CULLEN. 239 

iree and vigorous energy; sufficiently scholastic to prevent a 
one-sided and exclusive development. It was also favorable to 
the same result, that from an early period of life, his activity was 
divided between practice, study, and teaching ; and extended to 
almost every subject of medical science — all however viewed in 
subordination to the great end of professional knowledge, the cure 
of disease. 

Cullen's mind was essentially philosophic. Without neglect- 
ing observation, in which he was singularly acute, he devoted 
himself less to experiment than to arrangement and generaliza- 
tion. We are not aware, indeed, that he made the discovery of 
a single sensible phenomenon. Nor do we think less of him that 
he did not. Individual appearances are of interest only as they 
represent a general law. In physical science the discovery of 
new facts is open to every blockhead with patience, manual dex- 
terity, and acute senses ; it is less effectually promoted by genius 
than by co-operation, and more frequently the result of accident 
than of design. But what Cullen did, it required individual 
ability to do. It required, in its highest intensity, the highest 
faculty of mind — that of tracing the analogy of unconnected 
observations, of evolving from the multitude of particular facts 
a common principle, the detection of which might recall them 
from confusion to system, from incomprehensibility to science. 
Of ten thousand physicians familiar with the same appearances 
as Cullen, is there one could have turned these appearances to 
the same account ? But though not an experimentalist, Cullen's 
philosophy was strictly a philosophy of experience. The only 
speculation he recognized as legitimate was induction. To him 
theory was only the expression of an universal fact; and in 
rising to this fact, no one, with equal consciousness of power, 
was ever more cautious in the different steps of his generaliza- 
tion. 

Cullen's reputation, though high, has never been equal to his 
deserts. This is owing to a variety of causes. In medical 
science, a higher talent obtains perhaps a smaller recompense of 
popular applause than in any other department of knowledge. 
" Dat Galenus opes ;" "the solid pudding," but not "the empty 
praise." Of all subjects of scientific interest, men in general 
seem to have the weakest curiosity in regard to the functions of 
their own minds, and even bodies. So is it now, and, however 
marvelous, so has it always been. " Eunt homines," says St. 



240 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

Austin, "mirari alta montium, ingentes flnctus maris, altissimos 
lapsus fluminum, oceani ambitum, et gyros siderum ; — seipsos 
relinqimnt nee mirantur." For one amateur physiologist, we 
meet a hundred dilettanti chemists, and botanists, and mineralo- 
gists, and geologists. Even medical men themselves are, in 
general, equally careless and incompetent judges as the public at 
large, of all high accomplishment in their profession. Medicine 
they cultivate not as a science, but as a trade; are indifferent to 
all that transcends the sphere of vulgar practice ; and affect to 
despise what they are unable to appreciate. But independently 
of the general causes which have prevented Cullen from obtaining 
his due complement of fame, there are particular causes which 
conspired also to the same result. His doctrine was not always 
fully developed in his works ; his opinions have been ignorantly 
misrepresented ; his originality invidiously impugned ; and what 
he taught in his lectures, published without acknowledgment by 
his pupils. 

Cullen's honor thus calling for vindication, was long abandon- 
ed to neglect. This may be in part explained by the peculiar 
difficulty of the task. He who was competent to appreciate 
Cullen's merits, and to assert for him his proper place among 
medical reasoners, behoved to be at home in medicine, both as 
a practical art, and as a learned science — he required at once 
experience, philosophy, and erudition. But this combination is 
now unfortunately rare : we could indeed with difficulty name a 
second individual so highly qualified for this duty as the accom- 
plished physician on whom it has actually devolved. The expe- 
rience of a long and extensive practice — habits of thought trained 
in the best schools of philosophy — an excursive learning which 
recalls the memory of a former age — and withal an admiration 
of his subject, transmuting an arduous undertaking into a labor 
of love — have enabled Dr. Thomson, in his life of Cullen, to pro- 
duce a work, which we have no hesitation in pronouncing the 
most important contribution from a British author to the history 
of medicine, since the commencement of our labors. Cullen's 
personal biography is comparatively meagre. His life is in his 
doctrine. But to exhibit this doctrine, as influenced by previous, 
and as influencing subsequent, speculation, was in a certain sort 
to exhibit the general progress of medical science. In the exe- 
cution of this part of his labor, Dr. Thomson presents an honor- 
able exception to the common character of our recent historians 



CTJLLEN'S LIFE. 241 

of medicine. He is no retailer of second-hand opinions ; and his 
criticism of an author is uniformly the result of an original study 
of his works. Though the life of a physician, the interest of this 
biography is by no means merely professional. " The Philoso- 
pher," says Aristotle, •-' should end with medicine, the Physician 
commence with philosophy." But philosophy and medicine have 
been always too much viewed independently of each other, and 
their mutual influence has never been fairly taken into account 
in delineating the progress of either. The history of medicine is, 
in fact, a part, and a very important part, of the history of phi- 
losophy. Dr. Thomson has wholly avoided this defect ; and his 
general acquaintance with philosophical and medical opinions, 
renders the Life of Cullen a work of almost equal interest to 
liberal inquirers, and to the well educated practitioner. 

William Cullen was born at Hamilton, in the year 1710. By 
his father, a writer (Anglice, attorney) by profession, and factor 
to the Duke of Hamilton, he was sprung from a respectable line 
of ancestors, who had for several generations been proprietors of 
Saughs, a small estate in the parish of Bothwell ; through his 
mother, he was descended from one of the most ancient families 
in the county of Lanark, the Robertons of Ernock. Having 
completed his course of general education in the grammar-school 
of his native town, and in the University of Grlasgow, he was 
apprenticed to Mr. John Paisley, a surgeon of extensive practice 
in that city. At this period (that of Edinburgh recently except- 
ed), the Scottish Universities did not afford the means of medical 
instruction ; and such an apprenticeship was then the usual and 
almost the only way in which the student of medicine could, in 
Scotland, acquire a knowledge of his profession. Having exhaust- 
ed the opportunities of improvement which Grlasgow supplied, 
Cullen, with the view of obtaining a professional appointment, 
went, in his twentieth year, to London. Through the interest 
of Commissioner Cleland (Will Honeycomb of the Spectator), 
probably his kinsman, he was appointed surgeon to a merchant 
vessel trading to the Spanish settlements in the West Indies, 
commanded by Captain Cleland of Auchinlee, a relation of his 
own. In this voyage he remained for six months at Port Bello ; 
thus enjoying an opportunity of studying the effects of a tropical 
climate on the constitution, and the endemic character of West 
Indian diseases. On his return to London, with the view of per- 
fecting his knowledge of drugs, he attended for some time in the 

0, 



242 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

shop of Mr. Murray, an eminent apothecary in the city. Two 
years (1732-1734) he spent in the family of Captain Cleland, at 
Auchinlee, in the parish of Shotts, wholly occupied in the study, 
and occasional practice, of his profession ; and after a season de- 
voted to the study of general literature and philosophy, under a 
dissenting clergyman of Rothbury in Northumberland, he com- 
pleted his public education by attending for two sessions (1734—5, 
1735-6) the medical classes in the University of Edinburgh. 

"The foundation," says his biographer, "of a new and extended medi- 
cal school had been laid a few years before this time in Edinburgh, by the 
appointment of Dr. Monro to the Chair of Anatomy in the University, and 
by the judicious arrangements which that excellent anatomist and experi- 
enced surgeon afteward made with Drs. Rutherford, Sinclair, Innes and 
Plummer, for the regular and stated delivery of lectures on the different 
branches of medicine. Previously to this arrangement, almost the only 
regular lectures given upon any subjects connected with medicine in Edin- 
burgh, were those which had been delivered in the Hall of the College of 
Surgeons, the chief medical school in that city, from the first institution 
of the College, in the year 1505, till the transference of the anatomical 
class into the University in 1725. 

" Though scarcely ten years had elapsed from the first establishment of 
a regular school of medicine in the University of Edinburgh when Dr. Cul- 
len became a student there, the reputation of that school was beginning 
to be every where acknowledged, and had already attracted to it, not only 
a great portion of those who were preparing themselves for the profession 
of medicine in the British dominions, but many students from foreign uni- 
versities." — P. 8. 

At the age of twenty-six, Cullen commenced practice in his 
native town, and with the most flattering success. His dislike 
to surgery soon induced him to devolve that department of busi- 
ness upon a partner ; and for the last four years of his residence 
at Hamilton (having graduated at Glasgow), he practiced only 
as a physician. Here he married Anna, daughter of the Rever- 
end Mr. Johnstone, minister of Kilbarchan ; who brought him a 
large family, and formed the happiness of his domestic life for 
forty-six years. Here also he became the friend and medical 
preceptor of the late celebrated Dr. William Hunter. Hunter 
had been educated for the church ; but an intercourse with Cullen 
determined him to a change of profession. After residing for a 
time in family with his friend, it was agreed that he should go 
and prosecute his studies in Edinburgh and London, with the 
intention of ultimately settling at Hamilton as Cullen's partner. 
This design was not, however, realized. Other prospects opened 
on the young anatomist while in London, and Cullen cordially 



CULLEN'S LIFE AND MEDICAL MERITS. 243 

concurred in an alteration of plan, which finally raised his pupil 
to a professional celebrity, different certainly, but not inferior to 
his own. Though thus cast at a distance from each other in 
after life, the friendship of these distinguished men continued to 
the last warm and uninterrupted. 

Cullen, who, during his seven years' residence at Hamilton, 
had been sedulously qualifying himself for a higher sphere of 
activity, now removed to Grlasgow. In the University of that 
city, with the exception of Anatomy, no lectures seem to have 
been previously delivered in any department of medicine. On his 
establishment in Grlasgow, Cullen immediately commenced lec- 
turer ; and, by the concurrence of the medical professors, he was 
soon permitted to deliver, in the University, courses of the Theory 
and Practice of Physic, of Materia Medica, of Botany, and of 
Chemistry. In his lectures on medicine, we find him maintain- 
ing in 1746, the same doctrines with regard to the theory of 
Fever, the Humoral Pathology, and the Nervous System, which 
he published in his writings thirty years thereafter. 1 

" In entering upon the duties of a teacher of medicine, Dr. Cullen ven- 
tured to make another change in the established mode of instruction, by 
laying aside the use of the Latin language in the composition and delivery 
of his lectures. This was considered by many as a rash innovation ; and 
some, desirous to detract from his reputation, or not sufficiently aware of 
the advantages attending this deviation from established practice, have 
insinuated that it was owing to Dr. Cullen's imperfect knowledge of the 
Latin that he was induced to employ the English language. But how 
entirely groundless such an insinuation is, must be apparent to every one 
at all acquainted with his early education, course of studies, and habks of 
persevering industry. When we reflect, too, that it was through the me- 
dium of the Latin tongue that he must have acquired his extensive knowl- 
edge of medical science, it seems absurd to suppose that he was not qual- 
ified, like the other teachers of his time, to deliver, had he chosen it, his 
lectures in that language. We are not left, however, to conjecture with 
regard to this point; for that Dr. Cullen had been accustomed, from an 
early period of his life, to compose in Latin, appears not only from letters 
written by him in that language to some of his familiar friends, first 
draughts of which have been preserved, but also from the fact, that, while 
he taught medicine at Glasgow in his vernacular tongue, he delivered, 
during the same period, several courses of lectures on Botany in the Latin 

1 Cullen, we see, is represented by French medical historians as "having taken 
Barthez for his guide." (Boisseau, in Diet, des Sc. Med. — Biogr. t. Hi. p. 363.) A 
chronological absurdity. Barthez was twenty-four years younger than Cullen ; the 
latter had, in his lectures, taught his peculiar doctrines twenty-eight years before " his 
guide" was yet known to the world ; and Cullen's Institutions of Medicine preceded 
the Nova Doctrina de Functionibus of Barthez by two, the Nouveaux Elemens de la 
Science de VHomme by six years. 



244 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

language. The notes of these lectures still remain among his papers ; and 
I find also, written with his own hand, in the same language, two copies 
of an unfinished text-book on Chemistry. The numerous corrections of 
expression which are observable in the first sketches of Dr. Cullen's Latin, 
as well as of his English compositions, show a constant attention on his 
part to the accuracy and purity of the language in which his ideas were 
expressed, and a mind always aiming, in whatever it engaged, at a degree 
of perfection higher than that which it conceived it had already attained." 
—P. 28. 

An interesting account of these various courses, is given by Dr. 
Thomson. In particular, justice is done to Cullen's extensive 
and original views in chemistry ; and a curious history is afforded 
of the progress of chemical lectures, both in this country and on 
the continent. In this science, Cullen, while lecturer in Glasgow, 
had the merit of training a pupil destined to advance it farther 
than himself; though, as Dr. Thomson has shown, the germs of 
Black's theory of latent heat are to be found in the lectures of his 
preceptor. Cullen's fame rests, however, on another basis. 

Cullen was thus the principal founder of the medical school of 
G-lasgow even before he was regularly attached to the University. 
In 1751, he was, however, admitted professor of the Theory and 
Practice of Physic, and this a few days before the translation of 
Dr. Adam Smith from the Chair of Logic to that of Moral Philos- 
ophy. On this occasion, Hume and Burke were unsuccessful 
candidates for the professorship vacated by Smith. With Smith 
and Hume, whose minds in many respects bore a strong analogy 
to his own, Cullen maintained a familiar intercourse during life ; 
and their letters, now for the first time printed, form no unattract- 
ive portion of the present volume. A mutual interest in the ap- 
plication of chemistry to the arts, afforded also, about the same 
period, the first occasion of a correspondence between Cullen and 
Lord Kames, which soon ripened into an enduring friendship. 
The strength of his attachments is one of the most interesting 
features of Cullen's character. He seems never to have relinquish- 
ed, never to have lost a friend ; and the paternal interest he 
manifested in his pupils, secured to him their warmest affections 
in return. 

Cullen had for some years contemplated a removal to Edin- 
burgh, before he accomplished his intention. At length, in 1755, 
on the decline of Dr. Plummer's health, he was conjoined with 
that gentleman in the Chair of Chemistry in the University of 
Edinburgh, notwithstanding considerable opposition on the part 
of the other medical professors. During the ten years he retained 



CULLEN'S LIFE AND MEDICAL MERITS. 245 

this professorship, the number of his auditors continued steadily 
to increase ; from under twenty, they rose to near a hundred 
and fifty. A translation of Van Swieten's Commentaries, which 
Cullen undertook at this juncture, was, like an earlier project of 
an edition of Sydenham's works, abandoned, in consequence of 
the extensive practice which he soon obtained. Nothing contri- 
buted more to the increase of his reputation than the clinical lec- 
tures which he now regularly delivered. In reference to these, 
his biographer has furnished us with an interesting sketch of the 
rise and progress of clinical instruction in general. In 1760, 
during a vacancy in the Chair of Materia Medica, he delivered 
also, with great applause, a course of lectures on that subject; 
the notes of which, after being rapidly multiplied in manuscript 
for several years, were at length surreptitiously published in 
London. 

The celebrity which Cullen had acquired as a teacher of medi- 
cal practice, by his clinical lectures, and his course on the materia 
medica, had gained him not only great professional employment 
in Edinburgh, but numerous consultations from all parts of Scot- 
land. He was now indeed generally regarded as the appropriate 
successor of Dr. Hutherford, in the Chair of Practical Medicine, 
Dr. Rutherford had, however, imbibed prejudices against Cullen, 
which disposed him to resign in favor of Dr. John Gregory of 
Aberdeen, a physician qualified in many respects to do high 
honor to the University, though Cullen's pretensions to the chair 
in question must be viewed as paramount to those of every other 
candidate. Cullen was unsuccessful ; and so disgusted was he 
with his treatment on this occasion, that, on the death of Dr. 
Whytt, in the following year (1766), he only consented to accept 
the Chair of the Theory of Physic, at the solicitation of his friends, 
and in order to leave a vacancy in that of Chemistry for Dr. Black. 
So strong, however, was the general conviction of Cullen's pre- 
eminent qualifications as a teacher of the practice of medicine, 
that the desire was ardently and publicly expressed by students 
and professors, that he should be permitted to lecture on that 
subject. With this desire Dr. Gregory liberally complied. Ac- 
cordingly, from the year 1768, the two professors continued to 
give alternate courses of the theory and practice of physic ; and 
on the death of Gregory in 1773, Cullen was appointed sole pro- 
fessor of the practice. " Such were the difficulties to be over- 
come, and such the exertions required to procure, first a place in 



246 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

the University of Edinburgh, and afterward the proper situation 
in it, for the man whose genius, talents, and industry, shed such 
a lustre over the institution, and contributed in so remarkable a 
degree to extend and to perpetuate the fame of its Medical School !" 
"With this period of Cullen's life, the present volume of his biogra- 
phy terminates. 

To form an estimate of what Cullen effected in the improve- 
ment of Medical Science, it is necessary to premise a few remarks 
in regard to what it behoved him to accomplish. 

If we take a general survey of medical opinions, we shall find 
that they are all either subordinate to, or coincident with, two 
grand theories. The one of these considers the solid constituents 
of the animal economy as the elementary vehicle of life, and con- 
sequently places in them the primary seat of disease. The other, 
on the contrary, sees in the humors the original realization of 
vitality ; and these, as they determine the existence and quality 
of the secondary parts, or solids, contain, therefore, within them- 
selves, the ultimate principle of the morbid affection. By relation 
to these theories, the history of medicine is divided into three 
great periods. During the first, the two theories, still crude, are 
not yet disentangled from each other ; this period extends from 
the origin of medicine to the time of G-alen. The second com- 
prehends the reign of the Humoral Pathology — the interval be- 
tween Galen and Frederic Hoffmann. In the last, the doctrine 
of the Living Solid is predominant ; from Hoffman it reaches to 
the present day. 

In the medical doctrines of the first period, the two theories 
may be found partially developed. Sometimes Humorism, some- 
times Solidism, seems to be favored ; neither, however, is ever 
generalized to the exclusion of the other ; and the partisans of 
each may with almost equal facility adduce authorities from the 
schools of Cos and Grnidos, of Athens and Alexandria, in support 
of their favorite opinion. 

By Galen, Humorism was first formally expounded, and re- 
duced to a regular code of doctrine. Four elementary fluids, 
their relations and changes, sufficed to explain the varieties of 
natural temperament, and the causes of disease ; while the genius, 
eloquence, and unbounded learning with which he illustrated this 
theory, mainly bestowed on it the ascendency, which, without 
essential alteration, it retained from the conclusion of the sec- 
ond to the beginning of the eighteenth century. Galenism and 



GALENISM— HUMORISM 247 

Humorism are, in fact, convertible expressions. Not that this 
hypothesis during that long interval encountered no opposition. 
It met, certainly, with some partial contradiction among the 
Greek and Arabian physicians. After the restoration of learning 
Fernelius and Brissot, Argenterius and Joubert, attacked it in 
different ways, and with different degrees of animosity ; and 
while Humorism extended its influence by an amalgamation with 
the principles of the Chemiatric school, Solidism found favor with 
some of the mathematical physicians, among whom Baglivi is 
deserving of especial mention. Until the epoch we have stated, 
the prevalence of the Humoral Pathology was, however, all but 
universal. 

Nor was this doctrine merely an erroneous speculation ; it 
exerted the most decisive, the most pernicious influence on 
practice. — The various diseased affections were denominated in 
accommodation to the theory. In place of saying that a malady 
affected the liver, the peritonaeum, or the organs of circulation, 
its seat was assumed in the blood, the bile, or the lymph. The 
morbific causes acted exclusively on the fluids ; the food digested 
izi the stomach, and converted into chyle, determined the quali- 
ties of the blood ; and poisons operated through the corruption 
they thus effected in the vital humors. All symptons were 
interpreted in blind subservience to the hypothesis ; and those 
only attracted attention which the hypothesis seemed calculated 
to explain. The color and consistence of the blood, mucus, feces, 
urine, and pus, were carefully studied. On the other hand, the 
phenomena of the solids, if not wholly overlooked, as mere acci- 
dents, were slumped together under some collective name, and 
attached to the theory through a subsidiary hypothesis. By 
supposed changes in the humors, they explained the association 
and consecution of symptoms. Under the terms, crudity, coction, 
and evacuation, were designated the three principal periods of 
diseases, as dependent on an alteration of the morbific matter. 
In the first, this matter, in all its deleterious energy, had not yet 
undergone any change on the part of the organs ; it was still 
crude. In the second, nature gradually resumed the ascendant ; 
coction took place. In the third, the peccant matter, now ren- 
dered mobile, was evacuated by urine, perspiration, dejection, 
&c, and aequilibrium restored. When no critical discharge was 
apparent, the morbific matter, it was supposed, had, after a suit- 
able elaboration, been assimilated to the humors, and its delete- 



248 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

rious character neutralized. Coction might he perfect or imper- 
fect ; and the transformation of one disease into another was 
lightly solved hy the transport or emigration of the noxious 
humor. It was principally on the changes of the evacuated 
fluids that they founded their judgments respecting the nature, 
issue, and duration of diseases. The urine, in particular, sup- 
plied them with indications, to which they attached the greatest 
importance. Examinations of the dead body confirmed them in 
their notions. In the redness and tumefaction of inflamed parts, 
they beheld only a congestion of blood ; and in dropsies, merely 
the dissolution of that fluid ; tubercles were simply coagula of 
lymph; and other organic alterations, in general, naught but 
obstructions from an increased viscosity of the humors The 
plan of cure was in unison with the rest of the hypothesis. 
Venesection was copiously employed to renew the blood, to atten- 
uate its consistency, or to remove a part of the morbific matter 
with which it was impregnated ; and cathartics, sudorifics, diu- 
retics, were largely administered, with a similar intent. In a 
word, as plethora or cacochymia were the two great causes of 
disease, their whole therapeutic was directed to change the quan- 
tity or quality of the fluids. Nor was this murderous treatment 
limited to the actual period of disease. Seven or eight annual 
bloodings, and as many purgations— such was the common regi- 
men the theory prescribed to insure continuance of health ; and 
the twofold depletion, still customary, at spring and fall, among 
the peasantry of many European countries, is a remnant of the 
once universal practice. In Spain, every village has even now 
its Sangrador, whose only cast of surgery is blood-letting ; and 
he is rarely idle. The medical treatment of Lewis XIII. may be 
quoted as a specimen of the humoral therapeutic. Within a sin- 
gle year this theory inflicted on that unfortunate monarch above 
a hundred cathartics, and more than forty bloodings. — During 
the fifteen centuries of Humorism, how many millions of lives 
did medicine cost mankind ? 

The establishment of a system founded on the correcter doc- 
trine of Solidism, and purified from the crudities of the Iatro- 
mathematical and Iatro-chemical hypotheses, was reserved for 
three celebrated physicians toward the commencement of the 
eighteenth century — Frederic Hoffmann — George Ernest 
Stahl — and Hermann Boerhaave. The first and second of this 
triumvirate were born in the same year, were both pupils of 



SOLIDISM.— STAHL, HOFFMANN, BOERHAAVE. 249 

Wedelius of Jena, and both professors, and rival professors, in the 
University of Halle ; the third was eight years younger than his 
contemporaries, and long an ornament of the University of Ley- 
den. The doctrines of these masters were in many respects 
widely different, and contributed in very different degrees to the 
subversion of the obnoxious hypotheses. This was more effectu- 
ally accomplished by the two Germans, especially by Hoffmann ; 
whereas many prejudices of the humoral pathology, of the media- 
nical and chemical theories, remained embalmed in the eclecti- 
cism of Boerhaave. 

In estimating Cullen's merits as a medical philosopher, Dr. 
Thomson was necessarily led to take a survey of the state of 
medical opinion, at the epoch when Cullen commenced his spe- 
culations : 

" At the period when Dr Cullen first began to deliver lectures on medi- 
cine in Glasgow, there prevailed in the medical schools of Europe three 
great systems of physic, those of Stahl, Hoffmann, and Boerhaave — teach- 
ers not less distinguished by their peculiar and original powers of intellect, 
than by their attainments in literature and philosophy, their proficiency 
in the mathematical and experimental sciences, and. their extensive knowl- 
edge of theoretical and of practical medicine. The lectures and writings 
of these eminent men, besides affording useful summaries of all that was 
known in medicine before the beginning of the eighteenth century, laid 
open various new and interesting views of the animal economy. Stahl 
and Hoffmann, in particular, recognized more distinctly, and recommended 
more emphatically, than had been done by any of their predecessors, the 
study of the living powers, and the laws by which they are governed, as 
the proper and legitimate objects of medical investigation. 

" The ancient doctrines of the four elements and their corresponding 
temperaments — of the separate functions of the vegetative, sentient, and 
rational souls — and of the agency of the natural, vital, and animal spirits — - 
had continued to be taught in the schools of medicine with very little va- 
riation, from the time of Galen till after the middle of the seventeenth 
century. It was, indeed but a short time before Stahl, Hoffmann and 
Boerhaave, began to lecture on medicine, that a solid foundation had been 
laid for the extension and improvement of medical science, by the intro- 
duction of the experimental and inductive method of prosecuting philo- 
sophical inquiries, so well explained and strenuously inculcated in the writ- 
ings of Lord Bacon— by the clear, precise, and logical distinction made 
by Descartes between mind and matter, as the respective subjects of pro- 
perties essentially different from each other — by the accurate analysis 
which had been given by Locke of mind and its operations, in his Essay 
on the Human Understanding, and his recognition of sensation and reflec- 
tion as distinct sources of knowledge — by the discovery by Newton of the 
universal law by which the motions of masses of matter placed at sensi- 
ble distances from one another are regulated, and his distinction of this 
class of motions from the chemical changes which the different species of 
matter produce upon one another when their minute particles are brought 



250 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

into immediate contact — by the application (though at first necessarily 
imperfect, and in many respects erroneous) of the principles of natural 
philosophy and of chemistry to the investigation of the phenomena of the 
animal economy — by the discovery of the circulation of the blood by Har- 
vey, and of the absorbent system by Asellius and Pecquet — by the minute 
examination of the structure, distribution, and functions of the nervous 
system by Willis, Vieussens, Baglivi, and others — and by the develop- 
ment by Glisson of the contractile or irritable power inherent in muscular 
fibres, by the operation of which the various motions of the animal econ- 
omy are performed ; — advances in knowledge all tending to facilitate the 
proper investigation of the vital susceptibilities and energies inherent in 
organized bodies, and of the operation of the external agents by which 
these susceptibilities and energies may be excited, modified or destroyed." 
(Pp. 162-3.) 

Stahl — Hoffman — Boerhaave, are then passed in review ; their 
doctrines displayed in themselves, and in relation to other sys- 
tems ; and subjected to an enlightened criticism. This analysis 
exhibits a rare command of medical and philosophical literature, 
strong powers of original speculation, and the caution of an expe- 
rienced practitioner. 

In discussing the Animism of Stahl, Dr. Thomson takes a view 
of the various divisions of the soul and its faculties, adopted by 
the different schools of philosophy and medicine, from Hippo- 
crates to Biumenbach ; and shows that the Stahlian theory, in 
rejecting the animal spirits of Gralen and Descartes, with all 
mechanical and chemical explanations of the vital functions, and 
in attributing to the same soul the collective phenomena of life, 
from the purest energies of intelligence to the lowest movement 
of the animal organism, has more of apparent than of real novel- 
ty. It was the universal opinion of the ancient philosophers, that 
body was incapable of originating motion, and that self-activity 
was the essential attribute of an incorporeal principle or soul. 
But while thus at one in regard to the general condition of acti- 
vity (Aristotle's criticism of the avTOKtvrjrov of Plato is only ver- 
bal), they differed widely as to this — whether different kinds of 
energy, change, movement, were determined by the same, or 
by different souls. Plato's psychological trinity is clear ; but 
whether Aristotle, by his Vegetable^ Animal, and Rational Souls, 
supposes three concentric potences of the same principle, or three 
distinct principles, is not unambiguously stated by himself, and 
has been always a point mooted among his disciples. Stahl's 
doctrine is thus virtually identical with the opinion of that great 
body of Aristotelians, who, admitting the generic difference of 



STAHL. 25i 

function between the three souls, still maintain their hypostatic 
unity. In this doctrine, the vegetable, animal, and rational 
souls, express only three of several relations of the same simple 
substance. We are not convinced, with Dr. Thomson, that any 
thing is gained by limiting the term tyv%rj, or Soul, to the con- 
scious mind. Many modern philosophers (as Leibnitz and, after 
Leibnitz, Kant) do not, even in the cognitive faculties, restrict 
our mental activity to the sphere of consciousness, and this too 
for sufficient reasons ; the phenomena of nutrition, growth, gene- 
ration, &c, are as little explicable on merely chemical and me- 
chanical principles, as those of sense, or even those of intelligence, 
and all seem equally dependent on certain conditions of the nerv- 
ous system ; the assumption of a double or triple principle is 
always hypothetical, and Entia non sunt multiplicanda prater 
necessitatem ; while, at the same time, on any supposition, a 
generic expression is convenient, to denote the cause or causes 
of life in its lowest and in its highest gradations. We are un- 
able, therefore, to coincide with Dr. Thomson in his praise of 
Gralen, for originating this innovation ; more especially as it is 
sufficiently apparent (however reserved his language may occa- 
sionally be), that in Galen's own theory of mind, the highest 
operations of intellect, and the lowest function of his unconscious 
Nature, are viewed as equally the reflex, and nothing but the 
reflex of organization. With this qualification, we fully coincide 
in the following estimate of Stahl : 

" The simple and sublime conception, that all the motions of the human 
body are produced and governed by an intelligent principle inherent in it, 
was well calculated, by its novelty and by the easy and comprehensive 
generalization of vital phenomena which it seemed to afford, to excite 
and promote the speculative inquiries of medical philosophers, and to free 
the science of medicine from many of those erroneous and absurd mechani- 
cal and chemical doctrines with which in its progress it had become en- 
cumbered. But the adoption of this hypothesis led Stahl, in the framing 
of his system, to be too easily satisfied with the imperfect and erroneous 
physiological view which he had taken of the human economy — to neg- 
lect the phenomena of life, as they present themselves in the nutrition 
and generation of plants and of irrational animals — to content himself in 
accounting for the phenomena of the organic functions, with applying the 
term Rational Soul to the principle which had been, by almost all former 
physiologists, denominated the vegetative soul of nature ; and almost 
wholly to omit in his view of the animal economy, the consideration of 
the peculiar and distinguishing susceptibilities and energies of the Nerv- 
ous system. These errors and omissions prevented Stahl from perceiv- 
ing the fixed boundary which has been established by nature between 
the operations of the material and mental faculties of our frame, in that 
consciousness of unity and personal identity, by which all the various 



252 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

modifications of sense, memory, intellect, and passion, appear to be con- 
stantly and inseparably accompanied ; while, at the same time, his am- 
bition to be the founder of a new sect in medicine, disposed him to be 
less just to the merits of his predecessors and contemporaries than is re- 
quired of one who undertakes to make any addition to the opinions or to 
the experience of past ages. 

" It is but just to Stahl, however, to acknowledge, that he had the merit 
of directing the attention of medical practitioners, in a more particular man- 
ner than had been done before his time, to that resistance to putrefaction 
which exists in the solid and fluid parts of the body during life — to the 
vital activities by which the state of health is preserved, and its functions 
duly performed — to the influence which the mind indirectly exercises over 
the different functions of the body — to the effects of the different passions 
in exciting diseases — to the natural course of diseases — and especially to 
those powers of the animal economy by which diseases are spontaneously 
cured or relieved."— (Pp. 180, 181). 

Medico, qua medicus, ignota est anima. Stahl may be re- 
proached, that his medical theory was purely psychological, and 
that he suffered it to exert too dominant an influence on his prac- 
tice. Confiding in the inherent wisdom of the vital principle, his 
medicine was, as he professed it to be, the " Art of curing by 
expectation." Cullen's censure of Stahl's practice, as "propos- 
ing only inert and frivolous remedies," appears, however, to Dr. 
Thomson too indiscriminating ; "it being," as he well observes, 
" a matter of extreme difficulty to say at what point a cautious 
and prudent abstinence from interference passes into ignorant 
and careless negligence." * 



1 [Dr. Thomson might, indeed, have stated this more strongly, and the statement 
would have been borne out, not by Stahl only, but by Hoffmann. In Hoffmann's dis- 
sertation, On the seven rules of good health, the last and most important of these is : — 
" Fly Doctors and doctors' Drugs, as you wish to be well ; (Fuge Medicos et Medica- 
menta, si vis esse salvus") : and this precept of that great physician is inculcated by 
the most successful practitioners (or non-practitioners) of ancient and of modern 
times. Celsus well expresses it : — " Optima medicina est non uti medicina ;" and I 
have heard a most eminent physician candidly confess, "that the best practice was 
that which did nothing ; the next best, that which did little." In truth, medicine in 
the hands by which it is vulgarly dispensed, is a curse to humanity, rather than a 
blessing; and the most intelligent authorities of the profession — " larpav oi ^apte'tr- 
raroi" — from Hippocrates downwards, agree that, on an average, their science, at 
least its practice, is a nuisance, and " send physic to the dogs." The Solidists, in- 
deed, promptly admit, that the Humorists were homicides by wholesale for about fif- 
teen centuries ; while Homoeopathy and the Water-cure are recoils against the mur- 
derous polypharmacy of the Solidists themselves. Priesnitz, I see, declares, that the 
most and the worst afflictions which " flesh is" not " heir to," but which water has 
to remedy, are " the doctor and the drugs." This is consolatory to the world at large ; 
for if, as Charron says, " we must all live and die on trust," so we must all live and 
die, secundum artem, on one medical system or another. The utmost we can do is, 
like Ajax, to die with our eyes open ; for — 

" Non nobis inter vos tantas componere lites ;" 

" Who shall decide when doctors disagree V 
Has the practice of medicine made a single step since Hippocrates V\ 



HOFFMANN. 253 

Dr. Thomson's account of Hoffmann's system is, however, still 
more interesting ; this physician being the great founder of the 
now dominant pathology of the Living Solid — Solidism, a doc- 
trine which it was Cullen's glory to adopt, to vindicate, and to 
complete. — However apparently opposed to that of his rival, the 
theory of Hoffmann was, equally with that of Stahl, established 
on the Aristotelic psychology ; although less dependent in prac- 
tice on any peculiar hypothesis of mind, and more influenced 
by the mathematical and chemical crotchets of the time, and the 
Cartesian and Leibnitian theories. The Peripatetic doctrine, as 
interpreted by Philoponus, Aquinas, Scotus, &c, of the sub- 
stantial difference of the Vegetable, Sensitive, and Rational 
Souls, corresponds exactly to Hoffmann's Nature or Organic 
Body — his Sentient Soul — and his Rational Soul ; agents, ac- 
cording to him, differing in essence as in operation. The merits 
of this great improver of medicine, whose works are now so cul- 
pably neglected, are canvassed by Dr. Thomson with equal learn- 
ing and discrimination. We can only afford to quote the follow- 
ing observations : 

" The great and prominent merits of Hoffmann as a medical philoso- 
pher, undoubtedly consisted in his having perceived and pointed out more 
clearly than any of his predecessors, the extensive and powerful influence 
of the Nervous System, in modifying and regulating at least, if not in pro- 
ducing, all the phenomena of the organic as well as of the animal func- 
tions in the human economy, and more particularly in his application of 
this doctrine to the explanation of diseases. Galen had recorded many 
facts which had been observed before his time, by Erasistratus, Herophi 
lus, and others, relative to the nervous system, considered as the organ of 
sense and voluntary motion, and to these he had added several new ob- 
servations and experiments of his own. But it was not till the publica- 
tion of the elaborate works of Willis and Vieussens, that the structure, dis- 
tribution, and functions of that system seem to have become the objects 
of very general attention among medical men. These authors pointed 
out many examples of sympathies existing between different parts of the 
human body through the medium of the nervous system, in the states 
both of health and disease ; and Mayow, Baglivi, and Pacchiom, endeavored 
to account for some of these sympathetic actions, by a contractile power 
which they erroneously supposed to be lodged in the fibres of the dura 
matter. It was reserved for Hoffmann, however, to take a comprehensive 
view of the Nervous System, not only as the organ of sense and motion, 
but also as the common centre by which all the different parts of the 
animal economy are connected together, and through which they mu- 
tually influence each other. He was accordingly, led to regard all those 
alterations in the structure and functions of this economy, which consti- 
tute the state of disease, as having their primary origin in affections of 
the nervous system, and as depending, therefore, upon a deranged state 



254 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

of the imperceptible and contractile motions in the solids, rather than 
upon changes induced in the chemical composition of the fluid parts of 
the body." (Pp. 195, 196). 

Boerhaave* s motto — Simplex Veri sigillum — stands in glaring 
contrast with his system. In practice he was a genuine follower 
of Hippocrates and nature ; in theory at once Peripatetic, and 
Cartesian, and Leibnitian, Iatro-chemist and Mechanician, Hu- 
morist and Solidist, his system presents only a plausible concilia- 
tion of all conflicting hypotheses. The eclecticism of Boerhaave, 
destitute of real unity, had no principle of stability, and was 
especially defective in relation to the vital powers. It was 
accordingly soon essentially modified by his disciples, and an 
approximation quietly effected to the simpler but more compre- 
hensive principles of Hoffmann. De G-orter, "Winter, Kaau 
Boerhaave, and Graubius, all co-operated to this result ; but the 
pupil who hazarded the most important changes on the system 
of his master, and who, indeed, contributed perhaps more than 
any other individual to the improvement of medical science in 
general, was Haller. In the development of his great doctrine 
of Irritability, Haller is, indeed, not the pupil of Boerhaave, but 
a follower of Hoffmann and Grlisson. Dr. Thomson's history of 
this doctrine is one of the most valuable portions of his work ; 
and his account of the celebrated controversy touching the prin- 
ciple of vital and involuntary motion between Whytt and Haller, 
will be found not more attractive to professional physicians, than 
to all who take any interest in the philosophy of animated nature. 

Having thus indicated Cullen's point of departure, Dr. Thom- 
son now guides us along the steps of his advance. Under the 
heads of Physiology, Pathology, and Therapeutics, a detailed ac- 
count is given of Cullen's system, in its common and in its pecu- 
liar doctrines. In this, the principal portion of the work, is exhi- 
bited, for the first time (and chiefly from manuscript sources), a 
comprehensive view of Cullen's services to medical science ; much 
original information is supplied ; new light is thrown upon points 
hitherto obscure ; many prevalent misconceptions are rectified ; 
and some unworthy, we are sorry to add, hitherto successful, 
plagiarisms are exposed. Cullen's reputation had suffered from 
misrepresentation, ignorance, and neglect; but never was the 
honor of an author more triumphantly vindicated by his biogra- 
pher. We regret our inability to do any justice to this admira- 
ble survey; which is, indeed, not more valuable as an appre- 



CULLEN. 255 

ciation of Cullen's merits, than as a supplement to the history 
of modern medicine. An outline of its contents would he of 
little interest or value; and even an outline would exceed our 
limits. — — — 

To the history of Cullen's doctrines in relation to those of pre- 
vious theorists. Dr. Thomson subjoins an account — and the best 
we have ever seen — of the contemporary progress of medicine in 
the schools of Montpellier and Paris. On this, however, we can 
not touch. Our limits also preclude us from following him in his 
important discussion on medical education. "We warmly recom- 
mend this part of the volume to those interested in the subject. 
A curious letter of Adam Smith (prior to the publication of his 
Wealth of Nations) on Universities and Degrees, will be admired 
for its ability by those who dissent from his well-known doctrine 
upon these points. "We regret that we can not make room for 
this very characteristic production, which is now for the first time 
given to the public. Its praise of the Scottish Universities, and 
its opinions as to Visitations, are particularly worthy of notice. 
The results of the late Royal Commission of Visitation will by 
some, perhaps, be viewed as affording a good commentary on Dr. 
Smith's text. " In the present state of the Scotch Universities, 
I do most sincerely look upon them as, in spite of all their faults, 
without exception the best seminaries of learning that are to be 
found any where in Europe." [Smith would not say this now ; 
and he said it then, probably, in utter ignorance of the Dutch and 
Grerman Universities.] " They are, perhaps, upon the whole, as 
unexceptionable as any public institutions of that kind, which 
all contain in their very nature the seeds and causes of negligence 
and corruption, have ever been, or are ever likely to be. That, 
however, they are still capable of amendment, and even of consider- 
able amendment, I know very well ; and a Visitation is, I believe 
the only proper means of procuring them this amendment. But 
before any wise man would apply for the appointment of so arbi- 
trary a tribunal, in order to improve what is already, upon the 
whole, very well, he ought certainly to know, with some degree 
of certainty, first, who are likely to be appointed visitors ; and 
secondly, what plan of reformation those visitors are likely to 
follow." Besides the medical matters we have been able to notice, 
this volume contains various other topics of general interest. 
The letters alone which it supplies of distinguished individuals 
form an important addition to the literary history of Scotland 



256 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF MEDICINE. 

during last century. David Hume, Adam Smith, Lord Kames, 
Duhamel, William Hunter, Black, Senac, Fothergill, are among 
Cull en's most frequent correspondents. 

"We look forward to the concluding volume with no little curi- 
osity. It will trace of course the influence of Cullen's specu- 
lations on the subsequent progress of medicine, and, we hope, 
continue (what Dr. Thomson has already proved himself so well 
qualified to execute) the history of this science to the present 
day. 



EDUCATION. 

I.-ON THE STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

AS AN EXERCISE OF MIND. 1 

(January, 1836.) 

Thoughts on the Study of Mathematics as a part of a Liberal 
Education. By the Rev. William "Whewell, M.A., Fellow 
and Tutor of Trinity College. 8vo. Cambridge : 1835. 

"We saw the announcement of this phamphlet with no ordinary 
interest — from the subject — from the place of publication — and 
from the author. 

The subject is one of great importance in the science of educa- 

1 [In French by M. Peisse ; in Italian by S. Lo Gatto ; in German, as a separate 
pamphlet, under the title — Ueber den Werlh und Unwerth der Mathematik, als Mittel 
der hoehern geistigen Auslildung, Cassel, 1836. To this last there is an able preface ; 
and the translator publishes the paper from " an intimate and resistless conviction 
that the plan of study in some of our new gymnasia comprehends too great a variety 
of objects, and, especially, lavishes too much time and application on mathematical in- 
struction ; — an instruction without interest to the majority of students, which, at the 
same time, pays no regard to the differences of natural disposition and future destina- 
tion, overloads the memory and compromises the development of the higher mental and 
moral capacities, while, more especially, it stunts the evolution of that free and inde- 
pendent activity of thought on which a utility for life and a susceptibility for its noblest 
avocations depend." 

This article was attacked in a pamphlet published by Professor Chevallier of Dur- 
ham, in the course of the year ; but his opposition being either mere assertion or mere 
mistake, I do not find it necessary to say any thing in reply. In fact, his defense of 
"The Study of Mathematics as conducive to the development of the Intellectual 
Powers," may suffice to show how little, even by an able advocate, can be alleged in 
vindication of their utility in this respect at all. 

Certain statements in the criticism have also been controverted by Professor Boole 
in his very able " Mathematical Analysis of Logic," in 1847. I shall consider these in 
a note. (P. 273). 

On Dr. Whewell's rejoinder, see the end of the article. 

One unimportant note appended by the Editor is omitted.] 

R 



258 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

tion. Whether and to what extent, the study of mathematics 
conduces to the development of the higher faculties, is a question 
which, though never adequately discussed, has been very confi- 
dently and very variously decided. The stream of opinions, and 
the general practice of the European schools and universities, 
allow to that study, at best, only a subordinate utility as a mean 
of liberal education ; — that is, an education in which the individual 
is cultivated, not as an instrument toward some ulterior end, but 
as an end unto himself alone; in other words, an education, in 
which his absolute perfection as a man, and not merely his rela- 
tive dexterity as a professional man, is the scope immediately in 
view. But, at the same time, it can not be denied, that signs of 
a revolutionary tendency in popular opinion, touching the objects 
and the end of education, are, in this nation at least, becoming 
daily more and more obtrusive ; and as the extended study of 
mathematics is that mainly proposed, in lieu of the ancient 
branches of discipline which our innovators would retrench, a pro- 
fessed inquiry, like the present, into the influence of this study on 
the intellectual habits, comes invested, independently of its gen- 
eral importance, with a certain local and temporary interest. 

But the centre from which it proceeds, enhances also the inter- 
est of the publication. In opposition to the general opinion of 
the learned world — in opposition to the practice of all other uni- 
versities, past or present — in opposition even to its oaths and 
statutes, and to the intention of its founders and legislators, the 
University of Cambridge stands alone in now making mathe- 
matical science the principal object of the whole liberal education 
it affords ; and mathematical skill the sole condition of the one 
tripos of its honors, and the necessary passport to the other : — 
thus restricting to the narrowest proficiency all places of distinc- 
tion and emolument in university and college, to which such 
honors constitute a claim ; — thus also leaving the immense ma- 
jority of its alumni without incitement, and the most arduous and 
important studies void of encouragement and reward. It is true, 
indeed that the effect of this contracted tendency of the public 
university is, in some degree, tempered by certain favorable acci- 
dents in the constitution of more than one of its private colleges , 
but with every allowance for petty and precarious counteraction, 
and latterly for some very inadequate legislation, the University 
of Cambridge, unless it can demonstrate that mathematical study 
is the one best, if not the one exclusive, mean of a general evolu- 



WORK REVIEWED. 259 

tion of our faculties, must be held to have established and main- 
tained a scheme of discipline, more partial and inadequate than 
any other which the history of education records. That no Cam- 
bridge mathematician has yet been found to essay this demonstra- 
tion, so necessary for his university, so honorable to his science, 
has always appeared to us a virtual admission, that the thesis was 
incapable of defense. A treatise, therefore, apparently on the 
very point, and by a distinguished member of the university, 
could not fail of engaging our attention ; and this, whether it 
proposed to defend the actual practice of the seminary, or to urge 
the expediency of a reform. 

From the character of its author, the pamphlet before us like- 
wise comes recommended by no mean claim to consideration. Mr. 
Whewell has already, by his writings, approved to the world, not 
only his extensive acquirements in mathematical and physical 
science, but his talent as a vigorous and independent thinker. To 
a narrower circle, he is known as the principal public tutor of the 
principal college of his university ; and in this relation, his zeal, 
and knowledge, and ability have concurred in raising him to an 
enviable eminence. Though more peculiarly distinguished by his 
publications in that department of science so exclusively patron- 
ized by the university, he has yet shown at once his intelligence 
and liberality, by amplifying the former circle of studies pursued 
in the college under his direction ; and, in particular, we are in- 
formed, that he has exerted his influence in awakening a new 
spirit for the cultivation of mental philosophy ; in which depart- 
ment he has already introduced, or is in the course of introducing, 
a series of more appropriate authors than those previously in use. 

In these circumstances it was with more than usual expecta- 
tion that we received Mr. Whe well's pamphlet. Its perusal — 
must we say it ?■ — has disappointed us. The confession is una- 
voidable. Even the respect which we entertain for the character 
and talents of the author, compels us to be plain rather than pleas- 
ant with his work. As a writer, Mr. "Whewell has long out-grown 
the need of any critical dandling : the question he agitates is far 
too serious to tolerate the bandying of compliments ; his author- 
ity, in opposition to our conviction, is too imposing to allow of 
quarter to his reasoning ; while we are confident, that he is him- 
self too sincere a champion of truth, to accept of any favor but 
what the interest of truth demands. 

We say, that we are disappointed with the pamphlet, and this 



260 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

on sundry accounts. We are disappointed, certainly, that its 
author did not here advocate for the university the literal views 
which he had already extended to his college. But taking it for 
a vindication of mathematical study, as the principal mean in the 
cultivation of the reasoning faculty — supposing, also, that the 
reasoning faculty is that whose cultivation is chiefly to be encour- 
aged in the liberal education of a university — considering it, in a 
word, from its own point of view alone, we say that we are dis- 
appointed with it, as failing signally in the accomplishment of 
what it proposes. In fact, had our opinion not previously been 
decided on the question, the perusal of this argument in defense 
of mathematical study, as a useful gymnastic of the mind, would 
have only tended to persuade us, that in this relation, it was com- 
paratively useless. 

Before entering on details, it is proper here, once for all, to pre- 
mise : — In the first place, that the question does not regard, the 
value of mathematical science, considered in itself, or in its ob- 
jective results, but the utility of mathematical study, that is, in 
its subjective effect, as an exercise of mind ; and in the second, 
that the expediency is not disputed, of leaving mathematics, as a 
co-ordinate, to find their level among the other branches of aca- 
demical instruction. It is only contended, that they ought not 
to be made the principal, far less the exclusive, object of academ- 
ical encouragement. We speak not now of professional, but of 
liberal, education ; not of that, which considers the mind as an 
instrument for the improvement of science, but of this, which 
considers science as an instrument for the improvement of mind. 

Of all our intellectual pursuits, the study of the mathematical 
sciences is the one, whose utility as an intellectual exercise, when 
carried beyond a moderate extent, has been most peremptorily 
denied by the greatest number of the most competent judges ; 
and the arguments, on which this opinion is established, have 
hitherto been evaded rather than opposed. Some intelligent math- 
ematicians, indeed, admit all that has been urged against their 
science, as a principal discipline of the mind ; and only contend 
that it ought not to be extruded from all place in a scheme of 
liberal education. With these, therefore, we have no contro- 
versy. More strenuous advocates of this study, again, maintain, 
that mathematics are of primary importance as a logical exercise 
of reason ; but unable to controvert the evidence of its contracted 
and partial cultivation of the faculties, they endeavor to vindi- 



QUESTION STATED— MR. WHE WELL'S GROUND. 261 

cate the study in general, by attributing its evil influence to 
some peculiar modification of the science ; and thus hope to avoid 
the loss of the whole, by the vicarious sacrifice of a part. But 
here, unfortunately, they are not at one. Some are willing to 
surrender the modern analysis as a gymnastic of the mind. They 
confess, that its very perfection as an instrument of discovery 
unfits it for an instrument of mental cultivation, its formulae 
mechanically transporting the student with closed eyes to the 
conclusion ; whereas the ancient geometrical construction, they 
contend, leads him to the end, more circuitously, indeed, but by 
his own exertion, and with a clear consciousness of every step 
in the procedure. Others, on the contrary, disgusted with the 
tedious and complex operations of geometry, recommend the 
algebraic process as that most favorable to the powers of gen- 
eralization and reasoning ; for, concentrating into the narrowest 
compass the greatest complement of meaning, it obviates, they 
maintain, all irrelevant distraction, and enables the intellect to 
operate for a longer continuance, more energetically, securely, 
and effectually. — The arguments in favor of the study, thus 
neutralize each other ; and the reasoning of those who deny it 
more than a subordinate and partial utility, stands not only un- 
o introverted, but untouched— not only untouched, but admitted. 

Mr. Whewell belongs to the class of thorough-going advocates ; 
he would maintain the paramount importance of mathematical 
study in general ; but willingly allows the worst that has been 
urged against it to be true of certain opinions and practices, to 
which he is opposed. The obnoxious modifications are not, how- 
ever, with him coincident either with the geometric, or with the 
analytic, method ; but though, we think, if fairly developed, his 
principles would tend to supersede the latter — as he has applied 
them, they merely affect certain alleged abuses in both depart- 
ments of the science. 

We were disappointed in finding so little said on the general 
argument ; and the special reasoning We must be allowed to dis- 
regard, as we can not recognize a suspected substance to be 
wholesome food, merely because certain bits of it are admitted 
to be deadly poison. 

But the general argument is not only brief but inconclusive. 
The usual generalities, the common vague assertions, we have, 
in praise of mathematics, and of the logical habits, which it is 
assumed, that they induce ; but Mr. Whewell controverts none 



262 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

of the grounds, he refers to none of the authorities, which go to 
prove that the tendency of a too exclusive study of these sciences 
is, absolutely, to disqualify the mind for observation and common 
reasoning. We can not now criticise its details, though to some 
we shall allude in the sequel ; but the very conception of the 
argument is vicious. Mr. Whewell contrasts Mathematics and 
Logic, and endeavors to establish the high and general import- 
ance of the former, by showing their superiority to the latter as 
a school of practical reasoning. Now admitting, what we are 
far indeed from doing, that the merits of the two sciences are 
fully produced and fairly weighed against each other, still the 
comparison itself is invalid. Logic, by a famous distinction, is 
divided : — into Theoretical or General Logic (%a>/oi? irpay/xdrcov, 
docens), in so far as it analyzes the mere laws of thought ; and 
into Practical or Special Logic (iv ^prjaei, utens), in so far as it 
applies these laws to a certain matter or class of objects. The 
former is one, and stands in the same common relation to all the 
sciences ; the latter is manifold, and stands in proximate relation 
to this or that particular science, with which it is in fact identi- 
fied. Now, as all matter is either necessary or contingent (a 
distinction which may be here roughly assumed to coincide with 
mathematical and non-mathematical), we have thus, besides one 
theoretical or general logic, also tivo practical or special logics in 
their highest universality and contrast. 

Theoretical Logic 
1) Practical Logic, 2) Practical Logic, 

As specially applied to Neces- As specially applied to Con- 
sary Matter = Mathematical tingent Matter — Philosophy 
reasoning. and General reasoning. 1 

Now, the question which Mr. Whewell proposes to handle, is 
— What is the best instrument for educating men to a full de- 
velopment of the reasoning faculty? and his answer to that 
question is — Mathematics. But the reasoning faculty of men, 
being in all principally, in most altogether, occupied upon con- 
tingent matter, comprising, what Mr. Whewell himself calls — 



1 [The study of Language, if conducted upon rational principles, is one of the best 
exercises of an applied Logic. This study I can not say that any of our universities 
encourage. To master, for example, the Minerva of Sanctius with its commentators 
is, I conceive, a far more profitable exercise of mind than to conquer the Principia of 
Newton. — But I anticipate.] 



MR. WHE WELL'S GROUND UNTENABLE. 263 

" the most important employments of the human mind;'''' he was 
bound articulately to prove, what certainly can not be presumed, 
that Mathematics (the Practical Logic of necessary matter) cul- 
tivate the reasoning faculty for its employment on contingent 
matter, better than Philosophy, &c. — the Practical Logic itself 
of contingent matter. But this he does not even attempt. On 
the contrary, after misstating the custom of " our universities," 
he actually overlooks the existence of the practical logic of con- 
tingent matter altogether ; — then, assuming mathematics, the 
logic of necessary matter, to be the only practical logic in exist- 
ence, he lightly concedes to it the victory over theoretical logic, 
on the ground, that "reasoning, a practical process, must be 
taught by practice better than by precept." The primary condi- 
tion and the whole difficulty of the problem is thus eluded ; for 
it behoved him to have proved, not to have assumed, the para- 
dox : — That the study of necessary reasoning alone, is a better 
exercise of the habits of probable reasoning, than the practice of 
probable reasoning itself, and that, also, illustrated by the theory 
of the laws of thought and of reasoning in general. We may 
at once admit, that theoretical logic realizes its full value only 
through its practical applications. But does it therefore follow 
— either that a useful practice is independent of theory, or that 
we shall come best trained to the hunting-field of probability, by 
assiduous locomotion on the railroad of calculus and demonstra- 
tion ? But of this hereafter. 

Having laid it down by this very easy process, that " Mathe- 
matics are a means of forming logical habits better than Logic 
itself," Mr. "Whewell broaches the important question : 

" How far the study thus recommended is justly chargeable with evil 
consequences? — Does it necessarily make men too little sensible to other 
than mathematical reasonings ? Does it teach them to require a kind of 
fundamental principles and a mode of deduction which are not in reality 
attainable in questions of morals or politics, or even of natural philosophy ? 
If it does this, it may well unfit men for the most important employments 

of the human mind, &c But is this, in fact, usually the case ? And 

if it happen sometimes, and sometimes only, under what circumstances 
does it occur ? This latter question has, I think, important practical bear- 
ings, and I shall try to give some answer to it. 

" I would reply, then, that [1°,] if mathematics be taught in such a 
manner that its foundations appear to be laid in arbitrary definitions with- 
out any corresponding act of the mind ; — or [2°,] if its first principles be 
represented as borrowed from experience, in such a manner that the whole 
science is empirical only ; — or [3°,] if it be held forth as the highest per- 
fection of the science to reduce our knowledge to extremely general propo- 



264 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

sitions and processes, in which all particular cases are included : — so 
studied, it may, I conceive, unfit the mind for dealing with other kinde 
of truth." (P. 8.) 

The development and illustration of these three propositions 
occupy the remainder of the pamphlet. 

Now, it will be observed that Mr. Whewell does not here or 
elsewhere, attempt any vindication of mathematics from those 
charges to which it is thus acknowledged to be obnoxious ; for it 
is no defense of the study in general, against which alone these 
accusations have from all ages been advanced, to admit, nay, to 
exaggerate the evil tendency of certain petty recent opinions, 
wholly uncontemplated by the accusers. 

The principal value of Mr. Whewell's pamphlet lies in the spe- 
cial illustrations of the first and third heads. There the mathe- 
matician is within his sphere. On these we should not have been 
indisposed to offer some remarks ; but the technical nature of the 
subject could not interest the general reader ; and in the words 
of Rabbinic apophthegm — " Dies brevis, et opus multum, et pater- 
familias urget." 

The second head, in which Mr. Whewell trenches on philoso- 
phy, we can not altogether overlook. He says : 

" I will not suppose, that any person who has paid any attention to 
mathematics does not see clearly the difference between necessary truths 
and empirical facts ; between the evidence of the properties of a triangle, 
and that of the general laws of the structure of plants. The peculiar 
character of mathematical truth is, that it is necessarily and inevitably 
true ; and one of the most important lessons which we learn from our 
mathematical studies is a knowledge that there are such truths, and a 
familiarity with their form and character. 

' ' This lesson is not only lost, hut read backward, if the student is taught 
that there is no such difference, and that mathematical truths themselves 
are learnt by experience. I can hardly suppose that any mathematician 
would hold such an opinion with regard to geometrical truths, although 
it has been entertained by metaphysicians of no inconsiderable acutenegs, 
as Hume. We might ask such persons how Experience can show, not 
only that a thing is, but that it must be; by what authority she, the 
mere recorder of the actual occurrences of the past, pronounces upon all 
possible cases, though as yet to be tried hereafter only, or probably never. 
Or, descending to particulars ; when it is maintained that it is from ex- 
perience alone that we know that two straight lines can not inclose space, 
we ask, who ever made the trial, and how ? and we request to be inform- 
ed in what way he ascertained that the lines with which he made his experi- 
ment were accurately straight. The fallacy is in this case, I conceive, too 
palpable to require to be dwelt upon." — (P. 32.) 

Now, in the first place, it is wholly beyond the domain of ma- 



MATHEMATICS NOT PHILOSOPHY. 265 

thematies to inquire into the origin and nature of their principles. 
Mathematics, as Plato 1 observes, and Proclus," are founded on 
hypotheses, of which they can render no account ; and for this 
reason, the former even denies them the denomination of Science. 
"The geometer, qua geometer," says Aristotle, "can attempt no 
discussion of his principles." 3 As observed by Seneca: — " The 
Mathematical is, so to speak, a superficial science ; it builds on a 
borrowed site, and the principles, by aid of which it proceeds, are 
not its own : Philosophy, on the contrary, begs nothing from an- 
other ; it rears its own edifice from its own soil." 4 These autho- 
rities represent the harmonious opinion of philosophers and ma- 
thematicians, in ancient and in modern times. 

But, in the second place, if a mathematician know so little of 
his province, as to make such an inroad into that of the philoso- 
pher, we can not for our life imagine, how a metaphysical flourish 
at the head of a mathematical system can affect the treatment 
of the science, and through that affect the mind of the student. 
We doubt, indeed, whether one mathematician in a hundred has 
ever possessed an opinion, far less the right to an opinion, on the 
matter. 

In the third place, what are we to think of the assumption, 
that the study of mathematics is requisite to make us aware of 
the existence of Necessary Cognitions — Necessary Truths ? That 
certain notions, that certain judgments, there are, which we are 
compelled to recognize as necessary, is a fact that was never un- 
known to, was never denied by, any rational being. Whether 
these necessary notions and judgments are truths, has been in- 
deed doubted by certain philosophers ; but of this doubt mathe- 
matics can afford us no solution — no proper materials for a solu- 
tion. The very propositions on which these sciences build their 
whole edifice of demonstration, are as well known by the tyro 
when he opens his Euclid, as by the veteran Euler or Laplace ; 
nay, they are possessed, even in prior property, by the philoso- 
pher, to whom, indeed, the mathematician must look for their 
vindication and establishment. 

But, in the fourth place, if Mr. Whewell " can hardly suppose 
that any mathematician would hold the opinion that mathemati- 
cal truths are learned from experience," we can not understand 

x Be. Repub. LI. vi. vii. 2 In Euclid. L. i. p. 22. 

3 Post Analyt. L. i. c. 12, (j 3. Compare Phys. L. i. c. 2, text 8. 

4 Epist. Ixxxviii. • 



266 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

why he takes the trouble of writing this treatise against such 
an opinion, as actually held, and held by a whole "school of 
mathematics ?" Perhaps, he means by " any mathematician" 
— any mathematician worthy of the name. But then if this 
" school of mathematics" be so contemptible, why write, and that 
so seriously, against them ? This, we may observe, is not the 
only contradiction in the pamphlet we have been wholly unable 
to reconcile. 

But, in the fifth place, the contrast of the mathematician and 
metaphysician is itself in error. — In regard to the exculpation of 
the mathematicians, we need look no farther than to the late Sir 
John Leslie for its disproof. " Geometry" (says that original 
thinker, and he surely was a mathematician), " is thus founded 
likewise on observation ; but of a kind so familiar and obvious, 
that the primary notions which it furnishes might seem intui- 
tive." ' — As to the inculpation of the metaphysicians — why was 
Locke not mentioned in place of Hume ? If Hume did advance 
such a doctrine, he only skeptically took up what Locke dogma- 
tically laid down. But Locke himself received this opinion from 
a mathematician ; for this part of his philosophy he borrows from 
Grassendi : and, what is curious, he here deserts the schoolman 
from whom he may appear to have adopted, as the basis of his 
philosophy, the twofold origin of knowledge — Sense and Reflec- 
tion; for the unacknowledged master maintains on this, as on 
many other questions, opinions far more profound than those of 
his disciple. — But in regard to Hume, Mr. Whewell is wholly 
wrong. So far is this philosopher from holding "that geometri- 
cal truths are learnt by experience," that, while rating mathemat- 
ical science, as a study, at a very low account, he was all too 
acute to countenance so crude an opinion in regard to its founda- 
tion ; and, in fact, is celebrated for maintaining one precisely the 
reverse. On this point Hume was neither sensualist nor skeptic, 
but deserted Aenesidemus and Locke to encamp with Descartes 
and Leibnitz. 

In the sixth place, the quality of necessity is correctly stated 
by Mr. Whewell as the criterion of a pure or a priori knowledge. 
So far, however, from this being a truism always familiar to ma- 
thematicians, it only shows that Mr. Whewell has himself been 
recently dipping into the Kantian philosophy ; of which he here 

1 Rudiments of Plane Geometry, p. 18 ; and more fully in Elements of Geometry 
and of Geometrical Analysis, p. 453. 



MATHEMATICAL NOT AN IMPROVING STUDY. 267 

adduces a famous principle and one of the most ordinary illustra- 
tions. The principle was indeed enounced by Leibnitz, in whom 
mathematics may assert a share ; but that philosopher failed to 
carry it out to its most important applications. In his philoso- 
phy, our conceptions of Space and Time are derived from expe- 
rience. We can trace it also obscurely in Descartes, and several 
of the older metaphysicians ; but assuredly it was nothing "pal- 
pable" nothing to which the mathematicians can lay claim. On 
this principle, as first evolved — at least, first signalized by Kant, 
Space and Time are merely modifications of mind, and mathe- 
matics thus only conversant about necessary thoughts — thoughts 
which can even make no pretension to truth and objective reality. 
Are the foundations of the science thus better laid ? — But to more 
important matters. 

It is an ancient and universal observation, that different studies 
cultivate the mind to a different development ; and as the end of 
a liberal education is the general and harmonious evolution of 
its faculties and capacities in their relative subordination, the 
folly has accordingly been long and generally denounced, which 
would attempt to accomplish this result, by the partial applica- 
tion of certain partial studies. And not only has the effect of a 
one-sided discipline been remarked upon the mind in general, in 
the disproportioned development of one power at the expense of 
others ; it has been equally observed in the exclusive cultivation 
of the same power to some special energy, or in relation to some 
particular class of objects. Of this no one had a clearer percep- 
tion than Aristotle ; and no one has better illustrated the evil 
effects of such a cultivation of the mind, on all and each of its 
faculties. He says : 

"The capacity of receiving knowledge is modified by the habits of the 
recipient mind. . For, as we have been habituated to learn, do we deem 
that every thing ought to be taught ; and the same object presented in an 
unfamiliar manner, strikes us, not only as unlike itself, but, from want 
of custom, as comparatively strange and unknown. For the accustomed 
is the better known. How great, indeed, is the influence of custom, is 
manifested in the laws ; for here the fabulous and puerile exert a stronger 
influence through habit, than, through knowledge, do the true and the 
expedient. Some, therefore (who have been over much accustomed to 
mathematical studies), will only listen to one who demonstrates like a 
mathematician ; others (who have exclusively cultivated analogical rea- 
soning), require the employment, of examples ; while others, again (whose 
imagination has been exercised at the expense of judgment), deem it suffi- 
cient to adduce the testimony of a poet. Some are satisfied only with an 
exact treatment of every subject ; to others, again, from a trifling disposi- 



268 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

tion, or an impotence of continued thought, the exact treatment of any 
becomes irksome. We ought, therefore, to be educated to the different 
modes and amount of evidence, which the different objects of our knowl- 
edge admit." 1 

And again: 

,: It is the part of a well-educated man to require that measure of accu- 
racy in every discussion, which the nature of its object-matter allows ; for 
it would not be more absurd to tolerate a persuasive mathematician, than 
to astrict an orator to demonstration. But every one judges competently 
in the matters with which he is conversant. Of these, therefore, he is a 
good judge — of each, he who has been disciplined in each, absolutely, he 
who has been disciplined in all." 2 

But the difference between different studies, in their contract- 
ing influence, is great. Some exercise, and consequently develope 
perhaps, one faculty on a single phasis, or to a low degree ; while 
others, from the variety of objects and of relations which they 
present, calling into strong and unexclusive activity the whole 
circle of the higher powers, may almost pretend to accomplish 
alone the work of Catholic education. 

If we consult reason, experience, and the common testimony of 
ancient and modern times, none of our intellectual studies tend to 
cultivate a smaller number of the faculties, in a more partial or 
feeble manner, than mathematics. This is acknowledged by every 
writer on education of the least pretension to judgment and expe- 
rience ; nor is it denied, even by those who are the most decidedly 
opposed to their total banishment from the sphere of a liberal in- 
struction. Germany is the country which has far distanced every 
other in the theory and practice of education ; and the three fol- 
lowing testimonies may represent the actual state of opinion 
in the three kingdoms of the Grermanic union which stand the 
highest in point of intelligence — Prussia, Bavaria, and Wirtem- 
berg. 

The first authority is that of : — Bernhardi, one of the most in- 
telligent and experienced authorities on education to be found in 
Prussia. 

"It is asked — Do mathematics awaken the judgment, the reasoning 
faculty, and the iinderstanding in general to an all-sided activity? We 

1 Mctaph. 1. ii. ( w AA<pa to e^arrov) C. 3, text. 14. 

2 Eth. Nicom. I. i. c. 3. The text universally received ("EKaoroy he Kpivei *caA<Sr 
a yti/axTKei fcai tovtu>v iariv dyadbs KplrrjS ■ ,Kaff eKaorov apa 6 rreTraiSevpei/os ' 
6ttXois 8e 6 irep\ ndv 7re7raibevpevos-), is at once defective and tautological. The 
cause of the corruption is manifest ; the emendation simple and, we think, certain. 

Eki-iotos 8e Kpivei koXcos a yii/wcncet, tovt&v ap icrriv dyados Kpirtjs • Kad' enaarov, 
6 Kaff ckclo-tov 7reirai.8evp.evos, a7r\a>s 8f, 6 nepl ndv ire7Tai8evpevos. 



MATHEMATICAL NOT AN IMPROVING STUDY. 269 

are compelled to answer — No. For they do this only in relation to a 
knowledge of quantity, neglecting altogether that of quality. — Further, 
is this mathematical evidence, is this coincidence of theory and practice 
actually found to hold in the other branches of our knowledge ? The 
slightest survey of the sciences proves the very reverse ; and teaches us 
that mathematics tend necessarily to induce that numb rigidity into our 
intellectual life, which, pressing obstinately straight onward to the end in 
view, takes no heed or account of the means by which, in different sub- 
jects, it must be differently attained." 1 

The second authority we quote, is that of the distinguished 
philosopher who has long so beneficially presided over the Royal 
Institute of Studies in Munich — Von Weiller : — 

' ' Mathematics and Grammar differ essentially from each other, in re- 
spect to their efficiency, as general means of intellectual cultivation. 2 
The former have to do only with the intuitions of space and time, and are, 
therefore, even in their foundation, limited to a sp>ecial department of our 
being; whereas the latter, occupied with the primary notions of our in- 
tellectual life in general, is co-extensive with its universal empire. On 
this account, the grammatical exercise of mind must, if beneficially applied 
precede the mathematical. And thus are we to explain why the efficiency 
of the latter does not stretch so widely over our intellectual territory ; why 
it never develops the mind on so many sides ; and why, also, it never 
penetrates so profoundly. By mathematics, the powers of thought are 
less stirred up in their inner essence, than drilled to outward order and 
severity ; and, consequently, manifest their education more by a certain 
formal precision, than through their fertility and depth. This truth is 
even signally confirmed by the experience of our own institution. The 
best of our former Real scholars, when brought into collation with the 
Latin scholars could, in general, hardly compete with the most middling 
of these — not merely in matters of language, but in every thing which 
demanded a more developed faculty of thought." 3 

The third witness whom we call, is one, he it remarked, with 

1 Ansichten, Sf-c., i. e. Thoughts on the Organization of Learned, Schools, by A. F. 
Bernhardi, Doctor of Philosophy, Director and Professor of the Frederician Gymna- 
sium, in Berlin, and Member of the Consistorial Council, 1818. 

2 Vide Morgensterni Orat. De Litteris Humanioribus, p. 11. 

3 From a Dissertation accompanying the Annual Report of the Royal Institute of 
Studies, in Munich, for the year 1822, by its Director, Cajetan von Weiller, Privy 
Counselor, Perpetual Secretary of the Royal Academy of Sciences, &c. This testi- 
mony is worthy of attention, not merely on account of the high talent, knowledge, and 
experience of the witness, but because it hints at the result of a disastrous experiment 
made by authority of Government throughout the schools of an extensive kingdom ; — 
an experiment of which certain empirics would recommend a repetition among our- 
selves. But the experiment, which in schools organized and controlled like those of 
Bavaria, could be at once arrested when its evil tendency was sufficiently apparent, 
would, in schools circumstanced like ours, end only, either in their ruin, or in their 
conversion from inadequate instruments of a higher cultivation to effective engines of 
a disguised barbarism. We may endeavor, erelong, to prevent the experience of other 
nations from being altogether unprofitable to ourselves. 

" Felix quern faciunt aliena pericula cautum. n 



270 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

a stronger bias to realism, in the higher instruction, than is of 
late, after the experience of the past, easily to be found in G-er- 
many. Professor Klumpp observes : 

" We shall first of all admit, that mathematics only cultivate the mind 
on a single phasis. Their object is merely form and quantity. They 
thus remain, as it were, only on the surface of things without reaching 
their essential qualities, or their internal and far more important relations 
— to the feelings, namely, and the will — and consequently ivithont determ- 
ining the higher faculties to activity. So, likewise, on the other hand, 
the me??wry and imagination remain in a great measure unemployed; 
so that, strictly speaking, the understanding alone remains to them, and 
even this is cultivated and pointed only in one special direction. To a 
many-sided culture — to an all-sided harmonious excitation and develop- 
ment of the many various powers, they can make no pretension. This, 
too, is strongly confirmed by experience, inasmuch as many mere mathe- 
maticians, however learned and estimable they may be, are still notorious 
for a certain one-sidedness of mind, and for a want of practical tact. If, 
therefore, mathematical instruction is to operate beneficially as a mean 
of mental cultivation, the chasms which it leaves must be filled up by 
other objects of study, and that harmonious evolution of the faculties pro- 
cured, which our learned schools are bound to propose as their necessaiy 
end." 1 

To the same general fact, we shall add the testimony of one of 
the shrewdest of human observers, we mean Goethe, who in a 
letter to Zelter thus speaks : 

" This also shows me more and more distinctly, what I have long in 
secret been aware of, that the cultivation afforded by the Mathematics is, 
in the highest degree, one-sided and contracted. Nay, Voltaire does not 
hesitate somewhere to affirm, "j'ai toujours remarque que la geometrie 
laisse V esprit ou elle le trouve.' Franklin, also, has clearly and explicitly 
enounced his particular aversion for mathematicians ; as he found them, 
in the intercourse of society, insupportable from their trifling and captious 
spirit." 2 

Even D'Alembert, the mathematician, and professed encomiast 
of the mathematics, can not deny the charge that they freeze and 
parch the mind : but he endeavors to evade it. 

" We shall content ourselves with the remark, that if mathematics (as 
is asserted with sufficient reason) only make straight the minds which 



1 Die Gelchrtcn Schulen, <$-c, i. e. Learned Schools, according to the principles of a 
genuine humanism, and the demands of the age. By F. W. Klumpp, Professor in the 
Royal Gymnasium of Stuttgart. 1829, vol. ii. p. 41. An interesting account of the 
seminary established on Klumpp's principles, by the King of Wirtemberg, at his 
pleasure palace of Stetten, in 1831, is to be found in the Conversations Lexicon fur 
neucsten Zeit, i. p. 727. 

2 Bricfwechsel zwischen Goethe und Zelter, 1833, i. p. 430. 



MATHEMATICAL NOT AN IMPROVING STUDY. 271 

are without a bias, so they only dry up and chill the minds, already pre- 
pared for this operation by nature." 1 

Yet what a confession ! The Cambridge catholicon is thus a 
dose which never bestows health, but tends always to evolve the 
seeds of disease. 

Nay, Descartes, the greatest mathematician of his age, and in 
spite of his mathematics, also its greatest philosopher, was con- 
vinced from his own consciousness, that these sciences, however 
valuable as an instrument of external science, are absolutely per- 
nicious as a mean of internal culture. Baillet, his biographer, 
frequently commemorates this ; and first under the year 1623, 
the 28th of the philosopher, he records of Descartes, that : 

•' It was now a long time, since he had been convinced of the small 
utility of the Mathematics, especially when studied on their own ac- 
count, and not applied to other things. There was nothing, in truth, 
which appeared to him. more futile than to occupy ourselves with simple 
numbers and imaginary figures, as if it were proper to confine ourselves to 
these trifles (bagatelles) without carrying our view beyond. There even 
seemed to him in this something ivorse than tiseless. His maxim was, 
that such application insensibly disaccustomed us to the use of our rea- 
son, and made us run the danger of losing the path which it traces." 
(Cartesii Regulae ad Directionem Ingenii, Reg. iv. MSS). — [The words 
themselves of Descartes deserve quotation: " Revera nihil inanius est, 
quam circa nudos numeros figurasque imaginarias ita versari, ut velle 
videamur in talium nugarum cognitione conquiescere, atque superficiariis 
istis demonstrationibus, quae casu saepius quam arte inveniuntur, et magis 
ad oculos et imaginationem pertinent, quam ad intellectum, sic incubare, 
ut quodammodo ipsaratione uti desuescamus; simulque nihil intricatius, 
quam tali probandi modo, novas difficultates confusis numeris involutas, 
expedire. Q,uum vero postea cogitarem, unde ergo fieret, ut primi olim 
Philosophiae inventores, neminem Matheseos imperitum ad studium sapi- 
entiae vellent admittere, [a fable, the oldest recorder of which flourished 
some sixteen centuries subsequent to Plato,] tan quam haec discipline om- 
nium facillima et maxime necessaria videatur, ad ingenia capessendis aliis 
majoribus scientiis erudienda et prseparanda; plane suspicatus sum, quam- 
dam eos Mathesim agnovisse, valde diver sain a vidgari nostrae aetatis."] 
— Baillet goes on : " In a letter to Mersenne, written in 1630, M. Des- 
cartes recalled to him that he had renounced the study of mathematics 
for many years ; and that he was anxious not to lose any more of his 
time in the barren operations of geometry and arithmetic, studies lohich 
never lead to any thing important" — Finally, speaking of the general 
character of the philosopher, Baillet adds : " In regard to the rest of ma- 
thematics" (he had just spoken of astronomy, which Descartes thought, 
" though he dreamt in it himself, only a loss of time") — " in regard to 
the rest of mathematics, those who know the rank which he held above 
all mathematicians, ancient and modern, will agree that he was the man 
in the world best qualified to judge them. We have observed that, after 

1 Melanges, t. iv. p. 184, ed. 1763. [Compare also Esprit de VEncycl. II. p. 349.] 



272 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

having studied these sciences to the bottom, he had renounced them as of 
no use for the conduct of life and solace of mankind.'" i 

We shall refer to Descartes again. 

How opposite are the habitudes of mind which the study of 
the Mathematical and the study of the Philosophical sciences 2 
require and cultivate, has attracted the attention of observers 
from the most ancient times. The principle of this contrast lies 
in their different objects, in their different ends, and in the differ- 
ent modes of considering their objects ; — differences in the sciences 
themselves, which calling forth, in their cultivators, different 
faculties, or the same faculty in different ways and degrees, de- 
termine developments of thought so dissimilar, that in the same 
individual a capacity for the one class of sciences has, not with- 
out reason, been considered as detracting from his qualification 
for the other. 

As to their objects. — In the first place : — The Mathematical 
sciences are limited to the relations of quantity alone, or, to speak 
more correctly, to the one relation of quantities — equality and 
inequality; the Philosophical sciences, on the contrary, are 
astricted to none of the categories, are coextensive with existence 
and its modes, and circumscribed only by the capacity of the 
human intellect itself. — In the second place : — Mathematics take 
no account of things, but are conversant solely about certain 
images ; and their whole science is contained in the separation, 
conjunction, and comparison of these. Philosophy, on the other 
hand, is mainly occupied with realities ; it is the science of a 
real existence, not merely of an imagined existence. 



1 La Vie de Descartes, P. i. pp. Ill, 112, 225. P. ii. p. 481.— [The Regula; of 
Descartes, extracted also in the Port Royal Logic, were published in full, at Amster- 
dam, in 1701. They are found in the third volume of Garnier's edition of the 
" CEuvres Philosophiques de Descartes" (that is, his works to the exclusion of the 
Mathematical and Physical writings) ; and were translated into French by M. Cousin, 
in his edition of the whole works of the philosopher.] 

2 [Reminded by the preceding note — it may be proper here to remark upon the 
vague universality which is given to the terms philosophy and philosophical in common 
English ; an indefinitude limited specially to this country. Mathematics and Physics 
may here be called philosophical sciences ; whereas, on the Continent, they are 
excluded from philosophy, philosophical being there applied emphatically to those 
sciences which are immediately or mediately mental. Hegel, in one of his works, 
mentions that in looking over what in England are published under the title of "Phi- 
losophical Transactions," he had been unable to find any philosophy at all. This 
abusive employment of the words is favored, I believe, principally at Cambridge ; for 
if Mathematics and Physics are not philosophical, then that university must confess 
that it now encourages no philosophy whatever. The history of this insular pecub 
arity might easily be traced.] 



REASONS WHY MATHEMATICAL STUDY UNIMPROVING. 273 

As to their ends, and their procedure to these ends. — Truth or 
knowledge is, indeed, the scope of both ; but the kind of knowl- 
edge proposed by the one is very different from that proposed by 
the other. — In Mathematics, the whole principles are given ; in 
Philosophy, the greater number are to be sought out and estab- 
lished. — In Mathematics, the given principles are both material 
and formal, that is, they afford at once the conditions of the con- 
struction of the science, and of our knowledge of that construction 
{principia essendi et cognoscendi). In Philosophy, the given 
principles are only formal — only the logical conditions of the 
abstract possibility of knowledge. — In Mathematics, the whole 
science is virtually contained in its data ; it is only the evolution 
of a potential knowledge into an actual, and its procedure is thus 
merely explicative. In Philosophy, the science is not contained 
in data; its principles are merely the rules for our conduct in 
the quest, in the proof, in the arrangement of knowledge : it is a 
transition from absolute ignorance to science, and its procedure 
is therefore ampliative. In Mathematics we always depart from 
the definition ; in Philosophy, with the definition we usually end. 
■ — Mathematics know nothing of causes ; the research of causes 
is Philosophy ; the former display only the that (to on) ; the lat- 
ter mainly investigates the ivhy (to Bcotc). 1 — The truth of Mathe- 
matics is the harmony of thought and thought; the truth of 
Philosophy is the harmony of thought and existence. — Hence the 
absurdity of all applications of the mathematical method to phi- 
losophy. 

1 [By cause, &c, with modern philosophers, I mean efficient cause, and should have 
stated this articulately, had the possibility of ambiguity ever been suggested. When 
I therefore said that Philosophy and Mathematics are distinguished, in that the former 
is, and the latter is not, a research of causes, I, of course, meant and mean efficient 
causes. A very acute philosophical mathematician, Professor Boole, in his "Mathe- 
matical Analysis of Logic" (pp. 11, sq., 81, sq.), makes me in this contradict Aristo- 
tle ; and he is literally correct in his quotation from the Posterior Analytics, where 
Aristotle does declare, that the geometer investigates the Stdrt. Mr. Boole has not, 
however, recollected, that Aristotle had four causes ; and as Mathematics are confess- 
edly occupied with the formal, the philosopher, not only in the place adduced, but in 
sundry others, therefore states, that the mathematician is conversant about the why. 
But even Aristotle was fully aware, that the term cause or principle properly and em- 
phatically pertains only to the efficient ; and accordingly in his Eudemian Ethics (ii. 6), 
he states this, adding, as an example, that what in mathematics are called principles, 
are so styled, not in propriety, but only by analogy or resemblance. He indeed express- 
ly denies to them the efficient, &c. (Metaph. iii. 2, alibi.) 

Mr. Boole, likewise, has not observed, that it is not Abstract, Pure or Theoretical 
Logic which I oppose to Mathematics, but that I oppose to each other two Concrete, 
Applied or Practical Logics ; to wit, that of necessary matter = mathematics, and that 
of contingent matter = philosophy and common reasoning. See p. 262.] 



274 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

It is, however, proximately in the different modes of consider- 
ing their objects that Mathematics and Philosophy so differently 
cultivate the mind. 

In the first place : — "Without entering on the metaphysical 
nature of Space and Time, as the basis of concrete and discrete 
quantities, of geometry and arithmetic, it is sufficient to say that 
Space and Time, as the necessary conditions of thought, are, 
severally, to us absolutely one ; and each of their modifications, 
though apprehended as singular in the act of consciousness, is, at 
the same time, recognized as virtually, and in effect, universal. 
Mathematical science, therefore, whose notions (as number, figure, 
motion) are exclusively modifications of these fundamental forms, 
separately or in combination, does not establish their universality 
on any a posteriori process of abstraction and generalization ; but 
at once contemplates the general in the individual. The univer- 
sal notions of philosophy, on the contrary, are, with a few great 
exceptions, generalizations from experience ; and as the universal 
constitutes the rule under which the philosopher thinks the 
individual, philosophy consequently, the reverse of mathematics, 
views the individual in the general. 

In the second place : — In Mathematics, quantity, when not 
divorced from form, is itself really presented to the intellect in a 
lucid image of phantasy, or in a sensible diagram ; and the quan- 
tities which can not thus be distinctly construed to imagination 
and sense, are, as only syntheses of unity, repetitions of identity, 
adequately, though conventionally, denoted in the vicarious com- 
bination of a few simple symbols. Thus both in geometry, by 
an ostensive construction, and in arithmetic and algebra, by a 
symbolical, the intellect is relieved of all effort in the support and 
presentation of its objects ; and is therefore left to operate upon 
these in all the ease and security with which it considers the con- 
crete realities of nature. Philosophy, on the contrary, is princi- 
pally occupied with those general notions which are thought by 
the intellect but are not to be pictured in the imagination ; and 
yet, though thus destitute of the light and clefinitude of mathemat- 
ical representations, philosophy is allowed no adequate language 
of its own ; and the common language, in its vagueness and in- 
sufficiency, does not afford to its unimaginable abstractions that 
guarantee and support, which, though less wanted, is fully ob- 
tained by its rival science, in the absolute equivalence of mathe- 
matical thought and mathematical expression. 



REASONS WHY MATHEMATICAL STUDY UNIMPROVING. 278 

In the third place: — Mathematics, departing from certain 
original hypotheses, and these hypotheses exclusively determin- 
ing every movement of their procedure, and the images or the 
vicarious symbols about which they are conversant being clear 
and simple, the deductions of the sciences are apodictic or demon- 
strative ; that is, the possibility of the contrary is, at every step, 
seen to be excluded in the very comprehension of the terms. On 
the other hand, in Philosophy (with the exception of the Theory 
of Logic), and in our reasonings in general, such demonstrative 
certainty is rarely to be attained ; probable certainty, that is, 
where we are never conscious of the impossibility of the contrary, 
is all that can be compassed ; and this also, not being internally 
evolved from any fundamental data, must be sought for, collected, 
and applied from without. 

From this general contrast it will easily be seen, how an ex- 
cessive study of the mathematical sciences not only does not 
prepare, but absolutely incapacitates the mind, for those intel- 
. lectual energies which philosophy and life require. We are 
thus disqualified for observation, either internal or external — for 
abstraction and generalization — and for common reasoning ; nay 
disposed to the alternative of blind credulity or of irrational 
skepticism. 

That mathematics, in which the objects are purely ideal, in 
which the principles are given, in which, from these principles, 
the whole science is independently developed, and in which de- 
velopment the student is, as Aristotle expresses it, not an actor, 
but a mere spectator ;— -that mathematics can possibly in their 
study educate to any active exercise of the powers of observation 
either as reflected upon ourselves, or as directed on the affairs of 
life and the phenomena of nature, will not, we presume, be main- 
tained. But of this again. 

That they do not cultivate the power of generalization is 
equally apparent. The ostensive figures of Geometry are no 
abstractions — but concrete forms of imagination or sense ; and 
the highest praise, accorded by the most philosophical mathe- 
maticians, to the symbolical notation of arithmetic and algebra, 
is, that it has relieved the mind of all intellectual effort, by 
substituting a sign for a notion, and a mechanical for a men- 
tal process. In mathematics, genus and species are hardly 
known. 

G-eometry, indeed, has been justly considered as cultivating 



27ft STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

rather the lowest degree of the imagination 1 than any higher 
power of the understanding. — " The geometer," says (Philoponus 
or rather Ammonius) " considers the divisible forms in the imag- 
ination ; for he uses his imagination as his board"' 1 " Those 
rejoice" (says Albertiis Magnus), " in the mathematical sciences 
whose organ of imagination for receiving figures is temperately 
dry and warm." 3 — "Among philosophers" (says Fracastorius, the 
mathematician, the philosopher, the poet), " some delight to in- 
vestigate the causes and substances of things, and these are the 
Philosophers, properly so called. Others again, inquiring into the 
relations of certain accidents, are chiefly occupied about these, 
such as numbers and figures, and, in general, quantities. These 
latter are principally potent in the faculty of imagination, and in 
that part of the brain which lies toward its centre ; this, therefore, 
they have hot, and capacious , and excellently conservative. Hence, 
they imagine well how things stand in their wholes and in rela- 
tion to each other. But we have said, that every one finds 
pleasure in those functions which he is capable of performing 
well. Wherefore, these principally delight in that knowledge 
which is situate in the imagination, and they are denominated 
Mathematicians."* Though no believers in Gall, there can, how- 
ever, we think, be no doubt, that in the same individual there are 
very different degrees of imagination for different objects ; and of 
these one of the most remarkable is, the peculiar capacity possess- 
ed by certain persons of presenting and retaining quantities and 
numbers — the condition of a mathematical genius. — " The study 
of mathematics" (says Descartes, and he frequently repeats the 
observation), "principally exercises the imagination in the con- 
sideration of figures and motions." 5 Nay, on this very ground, he 
explains the incapacity of mathematicians for philosophy. " That 
part of the mind," says he, in a letter to Father Mersenne, "to 



1 In this country, the term Imagination has latterly been used in a more contracted 
signification, as expressive of what has been called the creative or productive imagina- 
tion alone. Mr. Stewart has even bestowed on the reproductive imagination the term 
Conception ; — happily, we do not think ; as both in grammatical propriety, and by the 
older and correcter usage of philosophers, this term (or rather the. product of this opera- 
tion — Concept) is convertible with general notion, or more correctly notion, simply, and 
in this sense is admirably rendered by the Begriff(vf\\at is grasped up) of the Germans. 

2 In Aristot. de Anima, Sign. B. iv. ed. Trincavelli, 1535. — (Aristot. 1. i. text. 16X 
So Themistius, frequently. 

3 In Mctaph. Aristot. L. 1. tract i. c. 5. So Averroes, frequently. 

4 De Intellectione, L. ii. Opera, f. 148, ed. 3. Venet. 1584. 
6 Lettres, p. i. let. xxx. 



MATHEMATICS DO NOT CONDUCE TO GENERALIZATION. 277 

wit, the imagination, which is principally conducive to a skill in 
mathematics, is of greater detriment than service for metaphysical 
speculations.'''" Sir Kenelm Digby acutely says: — "I may ob- 
serve, as our countryman Roger Bacon did long ago, that those 
students, who busy themselves much with such notions as reside 
wholly in the Fantasie, do hardly ever become idoneous for ab- 
stracted metaphysical speculations ; the one having bullae foun- 
dation of matter, or of the accidents of it, to settle upon (at least 
with one foot); the other flying continually, even to a lessening 
pitch, in the subtile air. And, accordingly, it hath been generally 
noted, that the exactest mathematicians, who converse altogether 
with lines, figures, and other differences of quantity, have seldom- 
proved eminent in metaphysics or speculative divinity ; nor again, 
the professors of these sciences, in the other arts. Much less can 
it be expected that an excellent physician, whose fancy is always 
fraught with the material drugs, that he prescribeth his apothe- 
cary to compound his medicines of, and whose hands are inured 
to the cutting up, and eyes to the inspection of anatomized bodies, 
should easily and with success, fie his thoughts at so towering a 
game, as a pure intellect, a separated and unbodied soul."* — The 
dependence of mathematics on the lower imagination is recognized 
in like manner, in the Kantian philosophy and its modifications. 
But the study of mathematical demonstration is mainly recom- 
mended as a practice of reasoning in general; and it is precisely, 
as such a practice, that its inutility is perhaps the greatest. — 
General reasoning is almost exclusively occupied on contingent 
matter ; if mathematical demonstration therefore supplies, as is 
contended, the best exercise of practical logic, it must do this by 
best enabling us to counteract the besetting tendencies to error, 
and to overcome the principal obstacles in the way of our probable 
reasonings. Now, the dangers and difficulties of such reasoning 
lie wholly — 1) in its form— -2) in its vehicle — 3) in its object-mat- 
ter. Of these severally. 

1.) As to the form :•— The study of mathematics educates to no 
sagacity in detecting and avoiding the fallacies which originate 
in the thought itself of the reasoner. — Demonstration is only de- 
monstration, if the necessity of the one contrary and the impos- 
sibility of the other be, from the nature of the object-matter itself, 

1 Epist. p. ii. ep. xxxiii. 

s Observations on Sir Thos. Brown's Religio Medici, sub initio. 



278 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

absolutely clear to consciousness at every step of its deduction. 
Mathematical reasoning, therefore, as demonstrative, allows no 
room for any sophistry of thought ; the necessity of its matter 
necessitates the correctness of its form, and, consequently, it can 
not forewarn and arm the student against this formidable princi- 
ple of error. Mr. Whewell, indeed, says, that — " In Mathematics 
the student is rendered familiar with the most perfect examples 
of strict inference ; compelled habitually to fix his attention on 
those conditions on which the cogency of the demonstration de- 
pends ; and in the mistaken and imperfect attempts at demon- 
stration made by himself or others, he is presented with examples 
of the most natural fallacies, which he sees exposed and cor- 
rected." (P-*5.) "We must be pardoned for observing that we 
should have wished the connection of the first clauses of this sen- 
tence and the last, had been instructed by something better than 
an " and ;" also that the novel assertions in this last itself had 
been explained and exemplified. Were the truth of our argu- 
ment not sufficiently manifest of itself, we might appeal to the 
fact, noticed by Aristotle and confirmed by all subsequent expe- 
rience, that of the sciences, mathematics alone have continued to 
advance without " shadow of turning," and even (as far as their 
proper objects are concerned) without dispute. Mathematics 
have from the first been triumphant over the husk ; Philosophy 
is still militant for the kernel. Logic, therefore, as the doctrine 
of the form of reasoning, so valuable in every other subject, is 
practically valueless in mathematics; and, so far from "forming 
logical habits better than logic itself" as Mr. Whewell intrepidly 
asserts, mathematics can not in this relation conduce to "logical 
habits" at all. The art of reasoning right is assuredly not to be 
taught by a process in which there is no reasoning wrong. We 
do not learn to swim in water by previous practice in a pool of 
quicksilver. Yet, if mathematics are to be recommended as 
counteracting our natural tendency to err, why not also propose 
the mercury as counteracting our natural tendency to sink ? Mr. 
Coleridge (himself a Cantabrigian) is right, when he says : — "It 
is a great mistake to suppose geometry any substitute for logic." 1 
Since writing the above, we have stumbled on the following 
passage of Du Hamel, not only a distinguished philosopher but 
a distinguished mathematician : 



1 Table Talk, i. 16. 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 279 

" I do not find, that geometers are mighty solicitous whether their argu- 
ments be, in formula, compounded according to logical prescription ; and 
yet there are none who demonstrate either more precisely or with greater 
conviction. For they usually follow the guidance of nature ; descending 
step by step, from the simpler and more general to the more complex, and 
defining every term, they leave no ambiguity in their language. Hence 
it is, that they can not err in the form of their syllogisms; for we seldom 
deviate from logical rules, except when we abuse the ambiguity of words, 
or attribute a different meaning to the middle term, in the major and in 
the minor proposition. — It is also the custom of geometers to prefix cer- 
tain self-evident axioms or principles, from which all that they are subse- 
quently to demonstrate flows. — Finally, their conclusions are deduced, 
either from definitions which can not be called in question, or from those 
principles and propositions known by the light of nature, and styled axioms, 
or from other already established conclusions, which now obtain the co- 
gency of principles. They make no troublesome inquiry into the mood or 
figure of a syllogism, nor lavish attention on the rules of logic ; for such 
attention, by averting their mind from more necessary objects, would be 
detrimental rather than advantageous." l 

[Arnauld has likewise some observations to the same effect. — 
Huygens and Leibnitz, indeed, truly observe, that mathematicians 
can, and sometimes do, err in point of form. But this aberration 
is rare and exceptional ; it requires, indeed, a most ingenious 
stupidity to go wrong, where it is far more easy to keep right. 
A mathematical reasoning may certainly transgress in form, and 
a railway locomotive may go off the rails. But as a railroad con- 
ductor need not look ahead for ditches and quagmires, so a ma- 
thematician, in his process, is not compelled to be on guard against 
the fallacies which beset the route of the ordinary reasoner.] 

But if the study of mathematics do not, as a logical discipline, 
warn the reason against the fallacies of thought, does it not, as 
an invigorating' exercise of reason itself, fortify that faculty 
against their influence ? To this it is equally incompetent. The 
principles of mathematics are self-evident; and every transition, 
every successive step in their evolution, is equally self-evident. 
But the mere act of intellect, which an intuitive proposition de- 
termines, is of all mental energies the easiest — the nearest, in 
fact, to a negation of thought altogether. But as every step in 
mathematical demonstration is intuitive, every step in mathe- 
matical demonstration calls forth an absolute minimum of thought; 



1 (De Mente Humana, 1. iii. c. 1. Opera, t. ii. p. 351.) See also, instar omnium, 
Fonseca {in Metaph. Aristot. L. ii. c. 3, q. 4, sect. 3.) Leibnitz (Opera, t. ii. p. 17) 
commemorates the notable exploit of two zealous, but thick-headed logicians — Herlinue 
and Dasypodius by name — who actually reduced the first six books of Euclid into for- 
mal syllogisms. 



280 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

and as a faculty, is always evolved in proportion to its competent 
degree of exercise, consequently mathematics, in determining 
reason to its feeblest energy, determines reason to its most limited 
development. 

In the inertion of this study, the mind, in fact, seldom rises to 
the full consciousness of self-activity. We are here passively 
moved on, almost as much as we spontaneously move. It has 
been well expressed: — "Mathematical munus pistrinarium est; 
ad molam enim alligati, vertimur in gyrum aeque atqne vertimusP 
The routine of demonstration, in the gymnastic of mind, may, 
indeed, he compared to the routine of the treadmill, in the gym- 
nastic of body. Bach determines a single power to a low but 
continuous action ; all, not disabled in the ordinary functions of 
humanity, are qualified to take a part in either; but as few with- 
out compulsion are found to expatiate on the one, so few without 
impulsion are found to make a progress in the other. Both are 
conversant about the necessary ; both depart from data ; of both 
the procedure is by steps ; and in both, the first step being con- 
ceded, the necessity of every other is shown on evidence equally 
intuitive. The one is ever moving, never advancing ; the other 
ever varying to infinity only the expression of the same identity. 
Both are abstract occupations ; and both are thought to disqualify 
for the world ; for though both corrective disciplines, a prejudice 
prevails toward the one, against the moral habits of its votaries, 
toward the other, against their moral reasoning. Among many 
other correspondences, both, in fine, cultivate a single intellectual 
virtue ; for both equally educate to a mechanical continuity of 
attention ; as in each the scholar is disagreeably thrown out, on 
the slightest wandering of thought. 

Nor is the extreme facility of mathematics any paradox. "No 
one, almost," says Cicero, " seems to have intently applied him- 
self to this science, who did not attain in it any proficiency he 
pleased ;" ' " Mathematics are the study of a sluggish intellect," 
says "the Helvetian Wliny ;" s and Warburton calls "the routine 
of demonstration the easiest exercise of reason, where much less 
of the vigor than of the attention of mind is required to excel.'* s 
Among the Greeks in ancient, as in the school of Pestalozzi, and 
others in recent times, mathematics were drawn back to the pri- 
mary elements of education. Among a hundred others, Aristotle 

1 Be Oratore, L. i. c. 3. 2 Zuingerus in Ethic. Nicom. L. vi. c. 9. 

3 Julian. Pref. Works, iv. p. 345. 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 281 

observes that not youths only, but' mere boys easily became 
mathematicians, while yet incapable of practical or speculative 
philosophy. 1 And in regard to boys, it is acknowledged by Nie- 
meyer, one of the highest authorities, in education, of our age, 
"to be a fact notorious in all schools, that the minds ivhich mani- 
fest a partiality for this class of abstract representations, possess 
the feeblest judgment in reference to other matters." 2 "The 
mathematical genius" (says the learned Bishop of Avranches, an 
admirer of mathematics, and himself no contemptible geometer) 
"requires much phlegm, moderation, attention, and circumspec- 
tion. All, therefore, that goes to the formation of those brilliant 
minds, to whom has been conceded by privilege the title of beaux- 
esprits, I mean copiousness, variety, freedom, readiness, vivacity 
— all this is directly opposed to mathematical operations, which 
are simple, slow, dry, forced, and necessary." 3 — [Finally, this 
extreme facility of the mathematical processes, is not only prompt- 
ly admitted by mathematical authors, but founded on by many 
of them as a strong recommendation of the study. Of these we 
need only mention, among many others, Descartes, Wolf, Daries, 
Colerus, Horrebovius, Weidler, Lichtenberg, &c, &c. ; but to 
these it is unnecessary to give articulate references.] 

This leads us to observe, that to minds of any talent, mathe- 
matics are only difficult because they are too easy. — Pleasure is 
the concomitant of the spontaneous and unimpeded energy of a 
faculty or habit ; and Pain the reflex, either of the compulsion of 
a power to operation beyond its due limits, whether in continu- 
ance or degree, or of the compulsory repression of its spontaneous 
tendency to action. A study, therefore, will be agreeable, in pro- 
portion as it affords the conditions of an exercise, spontaneous 
and unimpeded, to a greater number of more energetic faculties ; 
and irksome, in proportion as it constrains either to a too intense 
or too protracted activity, or to no activity at all. It is by reason 
of this principle that mathematics are found more peculiarly in- 
tolerable, by minds endowed with the most varied and vigorous 
capacities ; for such minds are precisely those which the study 
mulcts of the most numerous and vivid pleasures, and punishes 
with the largest proportion of intensest pains. It can not, cer- 
tainly, be said that the cultivation of these sciences fatigues a 

1 Eth. Nia. L. vi. c. 8. 

2 Ueber Pestalozzi, 1810, p. 51. See also Klnmpp, ut supra, vol. ii. p. 41. 

3 Huetiana, ch. 123. 



282 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

single faculty, by urging it to an activity at any moment too 
intense ; in fact, they are felt as irksome, in a great measure, 
because they do not allow even the one power which they partially 
occupy, its highest healthy exercise. In mathematics we attain 
our end — u non vi sed saepe cadendoP But the continued and 
monotonous attention they necessitate to a long concatenated 
deduction, each step in the lucid series calling forth, on the same 
eternal relation, and to the same moderate amount, the same 
simple exertion of reason ; — this, added to the inertion to which 
they condemn all the nobler and more pleasurable energies of 
thought, is what renders mathematics, in themselves the easiest 
of all rational studies — the most arduous for those very minds to 
which studies, in themselves most arduous, are easiest. 

In mathematics dullness is thus elevated into talent, and talent 
degraded into incapacity. — " Those," says the Chian Aristo, 
"who occupy themselves with Mathematics to the neglect of 
Philosophy, are like the wooers of Penelope, who, unable to attain 
the mistress, contented themselves with the maids." ' — Hipponu 
cus, a mathematical genius, and general blockhead, of whom his 
pupil, the philosopher Arcesilaus, used to say, " that his science 
must have flown into his mouth when yawning," 2 is the repre- 
sentative of a numerous class. — " The mathematician is either a 
beggar, a dunce, or a visionary, or the three in one," was long 
an adage in the European schools. 3 — " Lourd comme un geo- 
metre" 4 (dull as a mathematician) has also, by the confession of 
its objects, obtained a proverbial currency in the most mathemat- 
ical nation of Europe. — " A dull and patient intellect," says Jo- 
seph Scaliger, the most learned of men — "such should be your 
geometers. A great genius can not be a great mathematician" 5 
— "We see," says Roger Bacon, a geometer above his age, "that 
the very rudest scholars are competent to mathematical learning, 
although unable to attain to any knowledge of the other sciences." G 
— On the other hand, to say nothing of less illustrious examples, 
Bai/Ie, the impersonation of all logical subtilty, is reported by Le 
Clerc " to have confessed that he could never understand the 

1 Stobaci Floril., Tit. iv. 110. — We accept, but do not pledge ourselves to defend, 
the interpretation of the universal Gesner. 

2 Lacrt. L. iv. seg. 32. 

3 Alstcdii Didactica, c. 12 ; and Muclleri Parccmia Acadcmicce, p. 38. 

4 Encyclopedic, t. iv. p. 627. Art. Geometre, par D'Alcmbert (in Esprit dtc.) 
6 Scaligerana Sccunda, p. 270, Ed. Des Maizeaux. 

6 Opus Majus, P. iv. c. 3. 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 283 

demonstration of the first problem of Euclid: 1 and Wolf, "the 
philologer," the mightiest master of the higher criticism, as we 
are informed by his biographer and son-in-law, " was absolutely 
destitute of all mathematical capacity;" nay, "remained firmly 
convinced" (what, as gymnasiarch and professor, he had the 
amplest opportunities of verifying) "that the more capable a 
mind was for mathematics, the more incapable was it for the 
other noblest sciences." 2 

We are far from meaning hereby to disparage the mathemati- 
cal genius, which invents new methods and formulae, or new and 
felicitous applications of the old ; but this we assert — that the 
most ordinary intellect may, by means of these methods and for- 
mulae, once invented, reproduce and apply, by an effort nearly 
mechanical, all that the original genius discovered. The merit 
of a mathematical invention is, in fact, measured by the amount 
of thought which it supersedes. It is the highest compliment to 
the ingenuity of a Pascal, a Leibnitz, and a Babbage, in their 
invention of the arithmetical machine, that there would not be 
required, in those who use it, more than the dexterity of a turn- 
spit. The algebraic analysis is not an instrument so perfect ; it 
still requires a modicum of mind to work it. 

Unlike their divergent studies, the inventive talents of the 
mathematician and philosopher, in fact, approximate. To meta- 
physical intellects, like those of Descartes and Leibnitz, mathe- 
matical discovery shows almost as an easy game. Both were 
illustrious inventors, almost as soon as serious students, of the 
science ; and when the former, at the age of forty-two, published 
the work which, embodying his boyish discoveries, determines 
the grand era in the progress of the modern analytic, he had for 
seventeen years, as he expressly tells us, completely forgotten even 
the elementary operations of arithmetic. Yet so far was the 
puerile play of the philosopher, in advance of the veteran effort 
of the mathematician, that it is only about four years, since 
Fourier practically demonstrated how a great principle of Des- 
cartes, previously unappreciated, affords the best and the most 
rapid method for the analysis of numerical equations. 

2.) In regard to the vehicle : — Mathematical language, precise 
and adequate, nay, absolutely convertible ivith mathematical 
thought, can afford us no example of those fallacies which so 

1 Bill. Choisic, t. xii. p. 223. 

" Kortum, Leben Wolfs des Philologen, 1833. Vol. i. p. 23. 



284 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS 

easily arise from the ambiguities of ordinary language ; its 
study can not, therefore, it is evident, supply us with any means 
of obviating those illusions from which it is itself exempt. The 
contrast of mathematics and philosophy, in this respect, is an 
interesting object of speculation ; but, as imitation is impossible, 
one of no practical result. 

3.) In respect of the matter: — Mathematics afford us no assist- 
ance, either in conquering the difficulties, or in avoiding the dan- 
gers which we encounter in the great field of probabilities ivherein 
we live and move. 

As to the difficulties : — Mathematical demonstration is solely 
occupied in deducing conclusions ; probable reasoning, princi- 
pally concerned in looking out for premises. — All mathematical 
reasoning flows from, and — admitting no tributary streams — can 
be traced back to its original source : principle and conclusion 
are convertible. The most eccentric deduction of the science is 
only the last ring in a long chain of reasoning, which descends, 
with adamantine necessity, link by link, in one simple series, 
from its original dependence. — In contingent matter, on the con- 
trary, the reasoning is comparatively short ; and as the conclu- 
sion can seldom be securely established on a single antecedent, it 
is necessary, in order to realize the adequate amount of evidence, 
to accumulate probabilities by multiplying the media of inference ; 
and thus to make the same conclusion, as it were, the apex of 
many convergent arguments. (Compare Aristot. Anal. Post. I. 
12, § 13.) In general reasoning, therefore, the capacities mainly 
requisite, and mainly cultivated, are the prompt acuteness which 
discovers what materials are wanted for our premises, and the 
activity, knowledge, sagacity, and research able competently to 
supply them. — In demonstration, on the contrary, the one capa- 
city cultivated is that patient habit of suspending all intrusive 
thought, and of continuing an attention to the unvaried evolution 
of that perspicuous evidence which it passively recognizes, but 
does not actively discover. Of Observation, Experiment, Induc- 
tion, Analogy, the mathematician knows nothing. What Mr. 
Whewell, therefore, alleges in praise of demonstration — " that the 
mixture of various grounds of conviction, which is so common 
in other men's minds, is rigorously excluded from the mathemat- 
ical student's," is precisely what mainly contributes to render it 
useless as an exercise of reasoning. In the practical business of 
life the geometer is proverbially but a child : and for the theory 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 285 

of science ?— the subtlety of mind, the multiformity of matter, 
lie far beyond calculus and demonstration ; mathematics are not 
the net in which Psyche may be caught, nor the chain by which 
Proteus can be fettered. 

As to the dangers : — How important soever may be the study 
of general logic, in providing us against the fallacies which origi- 
nate both in the form and in the vehicle of reasoning, the error of 
our conclusions is, in practice, far less frequently occasioned by 
any vice in our logical inference from premises, then by the sin of 
a rash assumption of premises materially false. Now if mathe- 
matics, as is maintained, do constitute the true logical calharticon, 
the one practical propedeutic of all reasoning, it must of course 
enable us to correct this the most dangerous and prevalent of our 
intellectual failings. But, among all our rational pursuits, mathe- 
matics stand distinguished, not merely as affording us no aid 
toward alleviating the evil, but as actually inflaming the disease. 
The mathematician, as already noticed, is exclusively engrossed 
with the deduction of inevitable conclusions, from data passively 
received ; while the cultivators of the other departments of knowl- 
edge, mental and physical, are for the most part, actively occupied 
in the quest and scrutiny, in the collection and balancing of prob- 
abilities, in order to obtain and purify the facts on which their 
premises are to be established. Their pursuits, accordingly, from 
the mingled experience of failure and success, have, to them, 
proved a special logic, a practical discipline — on the one hand, of 
skill and confidence, on the other, of caution and sobriety : his, 
on the contrary, have not only not trained him to that acute scent, 
to that delicate, almost instinctive, tact which, in the twilight 
of probability, the search and discrimination of its finer facts 
demand; they have gone to cloud his vision, to indurate his 
touch, to all but the blazing light and iron chain of demonstra- 
tion, leaving him, out of the narrow confines of his science, either 
to a passive credulity in any premises, or to an absolute incre- 
dulity in all. 

Before, however, proceeding articulately to show how, in differ- 
ent dispositions, these opposite vices are, both, the natural conse- 
quences of the same common cause, we may first evince that our 
doctrine in regard to the general tendency of mathematical study 
is the universal opinion of those who, from their knowledge and 
their powers of observation, are the best qualified to pronounce 
a judgment. "We quote the authorities that chance to linger in 



286 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

our recollection ; a slight research might multiply them without 
end. 

On such a question, we, of course, prefer the testimony of 
mathematicians themselves ; they shall constitute our first class, 
and under this head we include those only who have distinguished 
themselves by mathematical publications. 

Of these, the oldest we shall adduce is that miracle of universal 
genius — Pascal : 

"There is a great difference between the spirit of Mathematics 1 and 
the spirit of Observation? In the former, the principles are palpable, 
but remote from common use ; so that from want of custom it is not easy 
to turn our head in that direction ; but if it be thus turned ever so little, 
the principles are seen fully confessed, and it would argue a mind incor- 
rigibly false, to reason inconsequently on principles so obtrusive, that it is 
hardly possible to overlook them. But, in the field of observation, the 
principles are in common use, and before the eyes of all. We need not 
to turn our head, to make any effort whatsoever. Nothing is wanted 
beyond a good sight : but good it must be ; for the principles are so minute 
and numerous, that it is hardly possible but some of them should escape. 
The omission, however, of a single principle, leads to error ; it is, there- 
fore, requisite to have a sight of the clearest, to discern all the principles; 
and, then, a correct intellect to avoid false reasonings on known principles. 
All mathematicians would, thus, be observant, had they a good sight ; for 
they do not reason falsely on the principles which they know ; and minds 
of observation would be mathematical could they turn their view toward 
the unfamiliar principles of mathematics. The cause why certain observ- 
ant minds are not mathematical, is, because they are wholly unable to 
turn themselves toward the principles of mathematics ; but the reason 
why there are mathematicians void of observation, is, that they do not 
see what lies before them ; and that accustomed to the clear and palpa- 
ble principles of mathematics, and only to reason after these principles 
liave been well seen and handled, they lose themselves in matters of observ- 
ation, where the principles do not alloiv of being thus treated. These 
objects are seen with difficulty ; nay, are felt rather than seen ; and it is 
with infinite pains that others can be made to feel them, if they have not 
already felt them without aid. They are so delicate and so numerous, 
that to be felt they require a very fine and a very clear sense. They can 
also seldom be demonstrated in succession as is done in mathematics ; for 
we are not so in possession of their principles, while the very attempt 
would, of itself, be endless. The object must be discovered at once, by a 
single glance, and not by course of reasoning — at least up to a certain 

1 In the original — Vcsprit de Geometric Geometric, as is usual in French, is here 
employed by Pascal for mathematics in general. 

- In the original — V esprit de Finesse. It is impossible to render this quite adequately 
in English. Fin is here used for acute, subtile, observant ; and esprit de finesse is 
nearly convertible with spirit of acute observation, applied especially to the affairs of 
the world. But as the expressions observant and spirit of observation with us actually 
imply the adjective, the repetition of which would be awkward, we have accordingly 
translated the original by these alone. 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXEECISE. 287 

point. Thus it is rare, that mathematicians are observant, or that ob- 
servant minds are mathematical : because mathematicians would treat 
matters of observation by rule of mathematic ; and make themselves 
ridiculous by attempting to commence by definitions and by principles— 
a mode of procedure incompatible with this kind of reasoning. It is not, 
that the mind does not perform the process ; but performs it silently, 
naturally, and artlessly : for its expression surpasses all men, and the con- 
sciousness of it appertains to few. On the other hand, minds of observa- 
tion, habituated to form their judgment at a single glance, are so amazed 
when propositions are laid before them, whereof they comprehend nothing, 
and wherein to enter, it behoves them to pass through definitions and bar- 
ren principles, which they are also unaccustomed thus to consider in 
detail — that they are revolted and disgusted. But false minds, they are 
never either observant or mathematical. Mathematicians, who are mere 
mathematicians, have thus their understanding correct, provided always 
that every thing be well explained to them by definition and principle : 
otherwise they are false and insupportable; for they are correct only upon 
notorious principles. And minds of observation, if only observant, are 
incapable of the patience to descend to the first principles of matters spec- 
ulative and of imagination, of which they have had no experience in the 
usage of the world." 1 

Berkeley is our second mathematician. He asks, and his 
queries are intended to be answered in the negative : 

" Whether tedious calculations in algebra and fluxions be the likeliest 
method to improve the mind ? And whether men's being accustomed to 
reason altogether about mathematical signs and figures, doth not make 
them at a loss how to reason without them ? "Whether whatever readi- 
ness analysts acquire in stating a problem, or finding apt expressions for 
mathematical quantities, the same doth necessarily infer a proportionable 
ability in conceiving and expressing other matters ?"* 

<S' Gravesande^ our third mathematical testimony, after praising 
geometry, as an useful exercise of intelligence, inasmuch as its 
principles are simple, its conclusions undoubted, and as it ascends 
from the easiest and simplest to the more difficult and more com- 
plex ; and the method of analysis, as cultivating the invention, 
from the necessity it imposes of discovering the intermediate terms 
requisite for bringing given extremes into comparison (this ad- 
vantage, be it noticed, can not be allowed to the mere study of 
the method), proceeds : 

" But it is not sufficient to have applied the mind to one science ; the 
more ividcly different among themselves are the ideas which the intellect 
acquires, and concerning which it reasons, the more expanded becomesits 
intelligence. In the mathematical sciences, by a well ordered exercise, 
the above-mentioned faculties are improved. But there is required, more- 
over, that these same faculties should be exercised upon ideas, now of one 

1 Pensees, I. Partie, art. 10, sect. 2. 2 Analyst, Qu. 38, 39. 



288 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

kind, now of another, and different from mathematical. Those who art 
habituated to the consideration of ideas of a single class, however skillful 
they may be in the handling of these, reason absurdly upon other matters. 
A pliant genius ought to be acquired ; and this is only to be compassed 
by applying the mind to a plurality of studies, ivholly different from 
each other. . . . We ought to be peculiarly attentive to this — that the 
mind be inured to abstract consideration. "Where ideas are to be com- 
pared, things are never more clearly illustrated than when we examine 
these ideas separately from all others. In such an exercise of mind the 
study of metaphysics is peculiarly useful, provided that all confused 
ideas be removed, and the others expounded in a natural order." 1 

_D' Alembert is the fourth mathematical authority. 

" It seems as if great mathematicians ought to be excellent metaphysi- 
cians, at least upon the objects about which their science proper is con- 
versant ; nevertheless, this is very far from being always the case. The 
logic of some of them is comprehended in their formulse, and does not ex- 
tend beyond. The case resembles that of a man who ha3 the sense of 
sight contrary to that of touch, or in whom the latter of these senses is only 
perfected at the expense of the former. These bad metaphysicians in a 
science in which it is so easy not to reason wrong, would infallibly be 
much worse, as experience proves, on matters in which they had not the 
calculus for a guided* 

[Lichtenberg, the celebrated Professor of Mathematics and 
Physics in G-oettingen, but who is also something better, being 
one of the wittiest writers and most philosophical thinkers of his 
country, is our fifth mathematical authority. After stating that 
" Mathematics are not only the most certain of all human sciences 
but also the easiest," he makes the following observation : 

:l Mathematics are a noble science, but as for the mathematicians they 
are often not worth the hangman. It is nearly the same with mathe- 
matics as with theology; for, as those who apply themselves to the latter, 
especially if they once obtain an office, forthwith arrogate to themselves 
the credit of peculiar sanctity and a closer alliance with God, though very 
many among them are in reality but good-for-nothing subjects ; in like 
manner, he who is styled a mathematician very frequently succeeds in 
passing for a deep thinker, although under that name are included the 
veriest dunderheads (die groessten Plunderkoepfe) in existence, incapable 
of any business whatsoever which requires reflection, since this can not be 
immediately performed by the easy process of connecting symbols, which 
is more the product of routine than of thought." 3 ] 

To this category we may also not improperly refer Dugald 
Stewart, for though not an author in mathematical science, 

1 Introductio ad Philosophiam, cj-c, § 887, sq. 3 Elemens dc Philosophic, c. 15. 

s [Vermischcte Schriften, II., p. 287, 1st ed. — I had resolved to add no new authori- 
ties to those which the article originally contained ; both because, in fact, these were 
perhaps superabundant, and because there need be no end to additions, if any be 
allowed. But this and those of Vives had been intended for the article ; in the haste, 
however, with which it was prepared, they were overlooked, until too late for insertion ] 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 289 

he was in early life a distinguished professor of mathematics ; 
while his philosophical writings prove that, to the last, he had 
never wholly neglected the professional studies of his youth. In 
other respects, it is needless to say that his authority is of the 
highest 

" How accurate soever the logical process maybe, if our first principles 
be rashly assumed, or if our terms be indefinite and ambiguous, there is no 
absurdity so great that we may not be brought to adopt it ; and it unfortu- 
nately happens that, while mathematical studies exercise the faculty of 
reasoning or deduction, they give no employment to the other powers of the 
understanding concerned in the investigation of truth. On the contrary, 
they are apt to produce a facility in the admission of data, and a circum- 
scription of the field of speculation by partial and arbitrary definitions. 
. . . When the mathematician reasons upon subjects unconnected with 
his favorite studies, he is apt to assume, too confidently certain intermedi- 
ate principles as the foundation of his arguments. ... I think I have ob- 
served a peculiar proneness in mathematicians, on occasions of this sort, to 
avail themselves of principles sanctioned by some imposing names, and to 
avoid all discussion which might lead to an examination of ultimate 
truths, or involve a rigorous analysis of their ideas." 1 

And much more to the same effect, which we do not quote, as 
the work is, or ought to be, in the hands of every one to whom a 
discussion like the present can he of any interest. 

The other authorities we shall take also in the order of time. 

[The testimonies of Ludovicus Vives, are valuable alike for the 
high authority of the witness, and for the number of points to 
which his evidence applies. He says : 

" These arts [the mathematical] as they appertain to use, so if use be 
superseded, are elevated to matters ivliolly profitless, affording only a sterile 
contemplation and inquiry without end, in as much as step determines step 
to an infinite series : and while the rudiments of these disciplines, and a 
certain legitimate progress in their study, aids, sharpens, and delights the 
mind ; so their intense and assiduous exercise constitutes the torture 
(carnificinre) of noble intellects, of those born for tlie benefit of man- 
kind"'* 

" Minds volatile and restless, prone to self-indulgence, and incapable of 
the labor of an unremitted attention, are vehemently abhorrent from these 
studies. For they tie down the intellect, compel it to do this or that, and 
permit it not to wander to any other object. Persons of an oblivious 
memory are, likewise, disqualified ; for if the previous steps be forgotten, 
not a hundreth of the others can be retained — such, in these sciences, is 
the series and continuous concatenation of the proofs. And for this reason, 
they very soon slip from the mind, unless beaten in by frequent exercise. 
Those ill adapted for the other and more agreeable, are frequently the 
subjects peculiarly fitted for these severe and repulsive studies. But such 

1 Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, iii. pp. 271, 288, 290. 
* [De Causis corruptarum artium. L. v. c. De Mathematicis.'] 

T 



290 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

knowledge, if any one continue to indulge himself therein, is without end ; 
while its seditious pursuit leads away from the business of life, and even 
deprives its votaries of common sense." 1 

After Sir Kenelm Digby, already quoted (p. 277), and to whom 
we here again refer, the next is that of Sorbiere, Historiographer 
Royal of France, who, if not a mathematical author himself, waa 
the intimate friend of the most distinguished mathematicians of 
his age — as Gassendi (of whose philosophy he was acknowledged 
even by Bernier to he the most accomplished disciple), Marsenne, 
Fermat, Carcavi, &c. Speaking of Grassendi's disregard of the 
higher geometry and algebra, and his valuing mathematics in 
general, only as the instrument of more important sciences, he 
says : 

" It is certain that the abstrusest Mathematics do not much con- 
duce, to say nothing worse of them, to the acquisition of right reason- 
ing, and the illustration of natural phenomena ; as every one is aware 
that mathematicians, distinguished in the higher branches of their sci- 
ence, are sometimes none of the most clear-sighted .in matters beyond its 
province." 2 

(And in another work :) — ' : It is an observation which all the world can 
verify, that there is nothing so deplorable as the conduct of some celebrated 
mathematicians in their own affairs, nor any thing so absurd as their 
opinions on the sciences not within their jurisdiction. I have seen of 
them, those who ruined themselves in groundless lawsuits; who dissipated 
their whole means in quest of the philosopher's stone ; who built extrava- 
gantly ; who embarked in undertakings of which every one foresaw the ill 
success ; who quaked for terror at the pettiest accident in life ; who formed 
only chimeras in politics ; and who had no more of our civilization than 
if born among the Hurons or the Iroquois." — (After a curious example.) 
" Hence, sir, you may form some judgment of hoio far algebra conduces to 
common sense, when the question is not about an affair of figures, and if 
there be not reason to believe that its abstractions are themselves of a nox- 
ious influence in the commerce of the ivorld. They are too minute for the 
ordinary usage of civil society ; and it is requisite to incorporate them with 
something less spiritual, in order that the thought may not be so piercing, 
so decisive, and so difficult to control." 3 

Clarendon : 

" The Earl of Leicester was a man of great parts, very conversant in 
books, and much addicted to the mathematics ; but though he had been 
a soldier, and commanded a regiment in the service of the states of the 
United Provinces, and was employed in several embassies, as in Denmark 
and France, was, in truth, rather a speculative than a practical man, and 
expected a greater certitude in the consultation of business, than the busi- 
ness of this world is capable of, which temper proved very inconvenient to 
him through the course of his life." 4 

1 [De tradendis disciplines. L. iv.] 2 Vita Gassendi; Pracf. Opcrum Gassendi. 
3 Lettres, let. lxviii. * History, &c. vol. ii. p, 153. Ed. 1704. 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 291 

he Clerc: 

" There is also sometimes to be considered so great a number of Modes 
and Relations, and these so minute, that they can not, without a far greater 
expense of time than we can afford them, be arranged in geometric order. 
And yet to form a correct judgment in regard to these, is a matter of much 
greater importance to us than concerning mathematical problems. Such 
are the various affections of the minds of men and of the affairs of life, con- 
cerning which, the most expert geometers do not judge better than their 
neighbors, nay, frequently toorse. It is a question, for instance, whether 
a certain plan or undertaking is to have a prosperous result. In that un- 
dertaking there are a multitude of ideas which can not be brought to an 
issue unless in a great variety of ways, which again depend on innumera- 
ble circumstances. Those accustomed to mathematical ideas, which are 
very easily observed, and, very easily discriminated from each other, when, 
by the rules of their science they attempt to judge of the administration 
of public or private affairs, arrive at conclusions the most absurd. For 
they take into account only the abstract possibilities, omitting in their 
reasonings certain dispositions of things and persons, which by their mul- 
tiplicity and minuteness, almost elude the acutest observation. It also 
happens, for the most part, that they who judge correctly in regard to 
such matters are ivholly wrong in regard to mathematical questions, if, 
indeed they did not eschew them as difficult, and alien from their habits.'" 

Buddeus : 

" Such is the nature of the human mind, that, if habituated to certain 
kinds of thought, it can not forthwith divest itself thereof, when passing to 
the consideration of other objects, but conjures up notions concerning these 
analogous to those already irradicated in it by custom. This is the real 
cause of errors almost infinite. Thus they, who inconsiderately carry over 
mathematical notions into morals and theology, seem to themselves to find 
in these nexo sciences the same necessary connection which they discovered 
in the old." 2 

BarbeyraC) speaking of the notes on Grrotius De Jure Belli, 
&c. by Feldenus, professor of mathematics at Helmstadt, of which 
Salmasius "had promised mountains and marvels," says : 

" Never was there seen aught more wretched ; and we might be sur- 
prised that a mathematician could reason so ill, had we not other, and 
far more illustrious examples, which clearly evince, that the study of the 
mathematics does not always render the mind more correct in relation to 
subjects beyond the sphere of the sciences."* 

Warburton : 

"It may seem, perhaps, too much a paradox to say, that long habit in 
this science {mathematics) incapacitates the mind for reasmiing at large, 
and especially in the search of moral truth. And yet, I believe, nothing 
is more certain. The object of geometry is demonstration, and its subject 
admits of it, and is almost the only one that doth. In this science, what- 

1 Clerici Logica, Pars. iii. c. 3, §$ 13, 14. 

2 Isagoge Historico-Theologica, 1. i., c. 4. 

3 Preface to his Grotius, t. i. p. ix. Ed. 1724. 



292 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

ever is not demonstration is nothing, or, at least, below the sublime inquir- 
er's regard. Probability, through its almost infinite degrees, from simple 
ignorance up to absolute certainty, is the terra incognita of the geome- 
trician. And yet here it is, that the great business of the human mind is 
carried on — the search and discovery of all the important truths which 
concern us as reasonable creatures. And here too it is, that all its vigor 
is exerted; for to proportion the assent to the probability accompanying 
every varying degree of moral evidence, requires the most enlarged and 
sovereign exercise of reason. But the harder the use of any thing, the 
more of habit is required to make xt,s perfect in it. Is it then likely that 
the geometer, long confined to the routine of demonstration, the easiest ex- 
ercise of reason, where much less of the vigor than of the attention of 
mind is required to excel, should form a right judgment on subjects whose 
truth or falsehood is to be rated by the probabilities of moral evidence ?"* 

Basedow : 

" Mathematics tolerate no reasoning from analogy. Of the coacerva- 
tion of proofs from many probable grounds ; of arguments from the cer- 
tainty and adaptation of thought; of the collision of proofs ; of useful prob- 
abilities ; of exceptions from ordinary truths in extraordinary circum- 
stances — of all these they take no account. Every thing, on the contrary, 
is determinate! y certain from the commencement ; of exceptions no math- 
ematician ever dreams. But is this character of thought applicable to 
the other branches of our knowledge ? The moment we attempt to treat 
logic, morals, theology, medicine, jurisprudence, politics, criticism, or the 
theory of the fine arts in this mathematical method, we play the part, not 
of philosophers but of dreamers, and this to the great detriment of human 
reason and happiness." &c. &c* 

Walpole : 

" The prof ound study of mathematics seems to injure the more general 
and useful mode of reasoning — that by induction. Mathematical truths 
being, so to speak, palpable, the moral feelings become less sensitive to 
impalpable truths. As when one sense is carried to great perfection, the 
others are usually less acute, so mathematical reasoning seems, in some 
degree, to injure the other modes oj 'ratiocination." 3 

Gibbon : 

" From a blind idea of the usefulness of such abstract science, my fa- 
ther had been desirous, and even pressing, that I should devote some time 
to the Mathematics ; nor could I refuse to comply with so reasonable a 
wish. During two winters I attended the private lectures of M. de Tray- 
torrens, who explained the elements of algebra and geometry, as far as 
the conic sections of the Marquis de l'Hopital, and appeared satisfied with 
my diligence and improvement. But as my childish propensity for num- 
ber and calculations was totally extinct, I was content to receive the 
passive impressions of my professor's lectures, without any active exer- 
cise of my own powers. As soon as I understood the principles, I relin- 
quished lor ever the pursuit of the mathematics ; nor can I lament that 
I desisted before my mind ivas hardened by the habit of rigid demon- 

1 Julian, Pref. p. xix. ; Works, vol. iv. p. 345. 

8 Philalethie. Bd. ii. $. 179. 3 Walpoliana, vol. i. p. 113. 



MATHEMATICS NOT A LOGICAL EXERCISE. 293 

stration, so destrtcctive of the finer feelings, of moral evidence, which 
must, however, determine the actions and opinions of our lives." 1 

Kirwan : 

" Some have been led to imagine — ' that the true way of acquiring a 
habit of reasoning closely, and in train, is to exercise ourselves in mathe- 
matical demonstrations ; that having got the way of reasoning which 
that study necessarily brings the mind to, they may be able to transfer it 
to other parts of knowledge as they shall have occasion.' This, however, 
is an egregious mistake ; the mode of reasoning of mathematicians being 
founded on the relation of identity or equality, is not transferable to any 
other science into which mathematical considerations do not enter, as 
ethics, jurisprudence, whether natural or municipal, medicine, chemistry, 
theology, metaphysics, &c, which are founded on relations entirely differ- 
ent. On the contrary, the habit of mathematical reasoning seems to un- 
fit a person for reasoning justly on any other subject ; for, accustomed 
to the highest degree of evidence, a mathematician frequently becomes 
insensible to any other." 2 

De Stael: 

" The study of languages, which in Germany constitutes the basis of 
education, is much more favorable to the evolution of the faculties, in the 
earlier age, than that of mathematics, or of the physical sciences. Pascal, 
that great geometer, whose profound thought hovered over the science which 
he peculiarly cultivated, as over every other, has himself acknowledged the 
insuperable defects of those minds which owe their first formation to the 
mathematics. This study, in the earlier age, exercises only the mechan- 
ism of intelligence. In boys occupied so soon with calculations, the spring 
of imagination, then so fair and fruitful, is arrested ; and they acquire not, 
in its stead, any pre-eminent accuracy of thought — for arithmetic and 
algebra are limited to the teaching, in a thousand forms, propositions 
always identical. The problems of life are more complicated ; not one 
is positive, not one is absolute ; we must conjecture, we must decide by 
the aid of indications and assumptions, which bear no analogy with thie 
infallible procedure of the calculus. Demonstrated truths do not con- 
duct to probable truths ; which alone, however, serve us for our guide in 
business, in the arts, and in society. There is, no doubt, a point at which 
the mathematics themselves require that luminous power of invention, 
without which it is impossible to penetrate into the secrets of nature. 
At the summit of thought the imaginations of Homer and of Newton seem 
to unite ; but how many of the young, without mathematical genius, con- 
secrate their time to this science ! There is exercised in them only a 
single faculty , while the whole moral being ought to be under develop- 
ment at an age when it is so easy to derange the soul and the body in 
attempting to strengthen only a part. Nothing is less applicable to life 
than a mathematical argument. A proposition couched in ciphers, is 
decidedly either true or false. In all other relations the true and the 
false are so intermingled, that frequently instinct alone can decide us in 
the strife of motives, sometimes as powerful on the one side as on the 
other." 3 

1 Life in Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 92. Ed. 1814. 

8 Logick vol. i. Pref. p. iii. 3 Dc VAllemagne, t. L c. 18. p. 163. 



294 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

We have already noticed in general that, beyond the narrow 
sphere of necessary matter, mathematicians are disposed to one 
or other of two opposite extremes — credulity and skepticism. 
The cause is manifest. 

Alienated, by the opposite character of their studies, from those 
habits of caution and confidence, of skill and sagacity, which the 
pursuit of knowledge in the universe of probability requires and 
induces ; they are constrained, when they venture to speculate 
beyond their diagrams and calculations, either, to accept their 
facts, on authority, if not on imagination — or, to repudiate alto- 
gether, as unreal, what they are themselves incapable of verify- 
ing. These opposite dispositions are not, however, incapable of 
conjunction ; they are indeed often united in the same individual, 
but in relation to different objects. 

This twofold tendency of mathematical study has frequently 
been noticed. In reference to philosophy, it is observed by Salat, 
a distinguished G-erman metaphysician : 

" The study of Mathematics, unless special precaution be taken, is rather 
a hinderance than an aid. — For, in so far as the mathematician, accus- 
tomed to his own mode of thinking, and ignorant of any other, applies, or 
does not apply it to the supersensible — what must follow ? In the former 
case, the supersensible world is denied, inasmuch as it can not be mathe- 
matically demonstrated ; and, in the latter, affirmed only on the ground of 
feeling and imagination. Thus, on the one alternative, the mathematician 
becomes necessarily a Materialist; on the other, a Mystic." 1 

Of the two extremes, that of credulity, as relative, at least, to 
the affairs of life, is by far the more frequent and obtrusive. Mr. 
Dugald Stewart seems even not indisposed to explain the appar- 
ent manifestations of the opposite tendency, on the ground of 
credulity alone. He says : 

" In the course of my own experience, i" have never met tcith a mere 
mathematician who was not credtd&us to a fatdt : credulous not only 
with respect to human testimony, but credulous also in matters of opinion ; 
and prone, on all subjects which he had not carefully studied, to repose 

too much faith in illustrious and consecrated names The atheism 

and materialism professed by some late mathematicians on the Continent, 
is, I suspect, in many cases, to be ascribed to the very same cause ; a cre- 
dulity yielding itself up as blindly to the fashionable disbelief of the day, 
as that of their predecessors submitted itself to the creed of the Infallible 
Church." 2 

Our limits, we regret, preclude us from adverting to Mr. Stew- 

1 Grundzeugc dcr allgemciner Philosophie ; by J. Salat, Ordinary Professor of Moral 
Philosophy in the University of Landshut, &c. 1820. 
Elements, vol. iii. p. 271, 280. 



MATHEMATICS INDUCE CREDULITY. 295 

art's ingenious suggestion of one cause, at least, of the disposition 

shown by mathematicians to fanaticism ; but we shall quote his 

testimony to the phenomenon. 

" It is a certain fact, that, in mathematicians who have confined their 
studies to mathematics alone, there has often been observed a proneness to 
that species of religious enthusiasm in which imagination is the predom- 
inant element, and which, like a contagion, is propagated in a crowd. In 
one of our most celebrated universities, which has long enjoyed the proud 
distinction of being the principal seat of mathematical learning in this 
island, I have been assured, that if, at any time, a spirit of fanaticism has 
infected (as will occasionally happen in all numerous societies) a few of 
the unsounder limbs of that learned body, the contagion has invariably 
spread much more widehj among the mathematicians than among the men 
of erudition. Even the strong head of Waring, undoubtedly one of the 
ablest analysts that England has produced, was not proof against the 
malady, and he seems at last (as I was told by the late Dr. Watson, Bishop 
of Llandaff) to have sunk into a deep religious melancholy, approaching 
to insanity." 1 

On this principle of facile credence, it is to be explained why 
of metaphysicians, the most fanciful and most confident specula- 
tors have been usually the most mathematical. Pythagoras, Plato, 
Cardan, Descartes, Mallebranche, and Leibnitz, are names not 
more distinguished for their philosophical genius than for their 
philosophical credulity. Conversant, in their mathematics, only 
about the relations of ideal objects, and exclusively accustomed 
to the passive recognition of absolute certainty, they seem in their 
metaphysics almost to have lost the capacity of real observation 
and of critically appreciating comparative degrees of probability. 
In their systems, accordingly, hypothesis is seen to take the place 
of fact ; and reason, from the mistress, is degraded to the hand- 
maid, of imagination. 

"Mathematical science," says the marvelous Prince of Miran- 
dola, " does not bestow wisdom : it was therefore, by the ancients, 
made the discipline of boys. On the contrary, though preparing 
for philosophy, if previously sipped in moderation, when raised to 
an object of exclusive study, it affords the greatest occasions of 
philosophical error. To this Aristotle bears evidence." 2 

" Descartes," says Voltaire, " was the greatest mathematician 
of his age ; but mathematics leave the intellect as they find it. 
That of Descartes was too prone to invention. He preferred the 

1 Elements, vol. iii. p. 291. 

2 Joannes Picus Mirandulanus in Astrologiam, 1. xii. c. 2. He is still more decided 
in his Conclusiones : — " There is nothing more hurtful to a divine than a frequent and 
assiduous exercise in the mathematics of Euclid." (Ixxxv. 6). See also his nephew's 
(John Francis) Examen Vanitatis Doctrines Gentium, 1. iii. c. 6. 



29G STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

divination to the study of nature. The first of mathematicians 
produced nothing almost hut romances of philosophy." 1 A more 
felicitous expression had heen preoccupied by Father Daniel ; — 
** The philosophy of Descartes is the romance of nature." But 
in fact, Descartes himself was author of the mot: — " My theory of 
vortices is a philosophical romance." 

In regard to Leibnitz, even his intelligent and learned friend, 
the first Queen of Prussia, was not blind to the evil influence of 
his mathematics on his philosophy. She was wont to say, with 
an eye to the "Pre-established Harmony" and "Monads," — "that, 
of all who meddled with philosophy, the mathematicians satisfied 
her the least, more especially when they attempted to explain the 
origin of things in general, or the nature of the soul in particular; 
and that she was surprised, that, notwithstanding their geometri- 
cal exactness, metaphysical notions v)ere, for most of them, lost 
countries, and exhaustless sources of chimeras? 

" There are four celebrated metaphysicians," says Condillac — 
" Descartes, Mallebranche, Leibnitz, and Locke. The last alone 
was not a mathematician, and yet, how greatly is he superior to 
the other three ?" 3 This may be disputed. 

But, if such be even the metaphysical, what, out of their 
sciences, are other mathematicians? It is enough to say, that 
astrology was the least visionary of Kepler 's beliefs ; while Napier 
and Newton and Winston sought, and found their fancies in the 
Apocalypse — a book of which a great Anglican divine has said, 
that, " it either finds a man mad, or leaves him so." 

The causes that determine the mathematician to an irrational 
belief, determine him also to an irrational confidence in his 
opinions. 

Poiret, that deep-thinking mystic, truly observes : 

" From the same source, mathematicians are also infested with an 
overweening presumption or incurable arrogance ; for, believing them- 
selves in possession of demonstrative certainty in regard to the objects of 
their peculiar science, they persude themselves that, in like manner, they 
possess a knowledge of many things beyond its sphere. Then, co-ordi- 
nating these with the former, as if demonstrated by equal evidence, they 
Bpurn every objection to every opinion, with the contempt or indignation 
they would feel at an endeavor to persuade them that two plus two are 

1 Le Siccle de Louis XIV. c. 29. 

8 Hist. Grit, de la Eepublique des Lettres, t. xi. p. 128. 

3 L'Art de Pcnser (Cours. t. iii. p. 398, Ed. 1780). (Euvres Pkilosophiques, t. vi 
p. 225. Ed. 



MATHEMATICS INDUCE CREDULITY. 297 

not four, or that the angles of a triangle are not equal to two right angles." 
&c. 1 

Warburton : 

" Besides this acquired inahility [p. 292], prejudice renders the veteran 
mathematician still less capable of judging of moral evidence. He who 
hath been so long accustomed to lay together and compare ideas, and hath 
reaped demonstration, the richest fruit of speculative truth, for his labor, 
regards all the lower degrees of evidence as in the train only of his mathe- 
matical principality ; and he commonly ranks them in so arbitrary a 
manner, that the ratio ultima mathematicorum is become almost as great 
a libel upon common sense as other sovereign decisions. I might appeal 
for the truth of this to those wonderful conclusions which Geometers, when 
condescending to write on history, ethics, or theology, have made of their 
premises. But the thing is notorious ; and it is no secret that the oldest 
mathematician in England is the worst reasoner in it." 2 

De Stael : 

" The study of mathematics, habituating us to certainty, inflames us 
against all opinions in contradiction with our own," &c. 3 

Dugald Stewart: 

" The bias now mentioned, is strengthened by another circumstance — 
the confidence which the mere mathematician naturally acquires in his 
powers of reasoning and judgment — in consequence of which, though he 
may be prevented in his own pursuits from going far astray, by the ab- 
surdities to which his errors lead him, he is seldom apt to be revolted by 
absurd conclusions in the other sciences. Even in physics, mathemati- 
cians have been led to acquiesce in conclusions ivhich appear ludicrous 
to men of different habits." ^ 

"We must refer to the original for some curious and instructive 
instances of this, in Euler, Leibnitz, D. Bernoulli, Grrandi, La 
Place, Leslie, Pitcairn, and Cheyne. 

The opposite bias — the skepticism of the mathematician, is 
principally relative to the spiritual or moral world. His studies 
determine him to this in two ways.— In the first place, by ab- 
stracting him from the view, and disqualifying him for the ob- 
servation, of the phenomena of moral liberty in man ; and in the 
second, by habituating him to the exclusive contemplation of the 
phenomena of a mechanical necessity in nature. But an igno- 
rance of the one order, and an extensive and intimate and con- 
stant consideration of the other, are tantamount to a negation 
of the unknown. For on the one hand, as we naturally believe 
to exist that only which we know to exist ; and on the other, as 

1 De Eruditione Solida, &c. Ed. 1692, p. 306. 

8 Julian, Pref. p. xx. ; Works, iv. p. 346. 

8 De V Allemagne, i. c. 18. * Elements, iii. p. 272. 



298 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

all science tends to unity, reason forbidding us to assume, with- 
out necessity, a plurality of causes ; consequently the mathe- 
matician, if he thinks at all, is naturally and rationally disposed 
to hold, as absolutely universal, what is universal relatively to his 
own sphere of observation. 

It is chiefly, if not solely, to explain the one phenomenon of 
morality, of freewill, that we are warranted in assuming a second 
and hyperphysical substance, in an immaterial principle of thought ; 
for it is only on the supposition of a moral liberty in man, that 
we can attempt to vindicate, as truths, a moral order, and, conse- 
quently, a moral governor, in the universe ; and it is only on the 
hypothesis of a soul within us, that we can assert the reality of a 
G-od above us — " Nullus in microcosmo Spiritus, nullus in macro- 
cosmo Deus." 

In the hands of the materialist, or physical necessitarian, every 
argument for the existence of a deity is either annulled, or reversed 
into a demonstration of atheism. In his hands, with the moral 
worth of man, the inference to a moral ruler of a moral world is 
gone. In his hands, the argument from the adaptations of end and 
mean, every where apparent in existence, to the primary causality 
of intelligence and liberty, if applied, establishes, in fact, the 
primary causalty of necessity and matter. For as this argument 
is only an extension to the universe of the analogy observed in 
man : if in man, design — intelligence, be only a phenomenon of 
matter, only a reflex of organization ; this consecution of first and 
second in us, extended to the universal order of things, reverses 
the absolute priority of intelligence to matter, that is, subverts 
the fundamental condition of a deity. Thus it is, that our the- 
ology is necessarily founded on our psychology ; that we must 
recognize a God from our own minds, before we can detect a God 
in the universe of nature. 

Now, the mathematical sciences, on the one hand, by leaving 
wholly unexercised the capacity of philosophical reflection, pre- 
vent the mind from rising to a clear consciousness of those fun- 
damental facts on which its moral freedom is established ; and on 
the other, by accustoming it to the exclusive contemplation of the 
laws of physical necessity, indispose it to tolerate so extraordinary 
an assumption, so indemonstrable an anomaly, as a moral order, 
an hyperphysical liberty, and an immaterial subject. 

This tendency of mathematical study has been always suf- 
ficiently notorious. Hence — (to take only the three contemporary 



MATHEMATICS INDUCE SKEPTICISM. 299 

fathers) — by St. Austin mathematics are said "to lead away 
from Grod ;" by St. Jerome to be " not sciences of piety ;'" while 
St. Ambrose declares, that " to cultivate astronomy and geometry 
is to abandon the cause of salvation, and to follow that of error."* 

We may here again refer to Sir Kenelm Digby's testimony, 
previously adduced (p. 277). 

And Poiret, again, who, though a mystic in religion, was one 
of the profoundest thinkers of his age. 

" The mathematical genus is wont, unless guarded against, to imbue 
the minds of its too intemperate votaries with the most pestilent disposi- 
tions. For it infects them with fatalism, spiritual insensibility, brutal- 
ism, disbelief and an almost incurable presumption. For when, in the 
handling of their numbers, figures, and machines, they perceive all things 
to follow each other, as it were by fate, to the exclusion of liberty ; they 
hence become so accustomed to the consideration of necessary connection 
alone, that they altogether eliminate freewill from the nature and govern- 
ment of things spiritual, and establish the universal supremacy of a fatal 
necessity." 3 

So Bayle : 

" It can not be disputed, that it is rare to find much devotion in per- 
sons toho have once acquired a taste for the study of the mathematics, 
and who have made in these sciences an extraordinary progress." 4 

So Gundling: 

" He who too zealously devotes himself to the physical and mathemat- 
ical sciences, may lightly lapse into an atheist. Hence we find, that all 
the more ancient philosophers were atheists, and this because too exclu- 
sively absorbed in physical and mathematical contemplations." 5 

Berkeley, himself no vulgar mathematician, asks : 

" Whether the corpuscularian, experimental, and mathematical philos- 
ophy, so much cultivated in the last age, hath not too much engrossed 
men's attention ; some part whereof it might have usefully employed ? — 
Whether from this, and other concurring causes, the minds of speculative 
men have not been borne downward, to the debasing and stupefying of 
the higher faculties ? And whether we may not hence account for that 
prevailing narrowness and bigotry among many who pass for men of 
science, their incapacity for things moral, intellectual, or theological, 
their proneness to measure all truths by sense and experience of animal 
life?" 6 

Dr. John Gregory, of a family to which mathematical genius 
seems almost native, and one of the most distinguished founders 
of the Edinburgh School of Medicine, in his "Lectures on the 

1 Vide Agrippam, De Van. Scient. c. xi. 2 Officiorum, I. i. 26. 

3 De Eruditione Solida, p. 304. Ed. 1692. * Diet. Hist, voce Pascal, note G. 

6 Historic der Gelehrheit, vol. i. Disc. Prelim, p. 8. 6 Analyst, Qu. 56, 57 



300 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

Duties and Qualifications of a Physician," after confessing that 
he distrusted his own judgment in relation to the study of mathe- 
matics, as afraid of his partiality to a science which he viewed 
with a kind of innate and hereditary attachment, and which had 
been at once the business and the pleasure of his early years, 
thus warns his pupils : 

" Let me also desire you to guard against its leading you to a disposition 
to skepticism and suspense of judgment in subjects that do not admit of 
mathematical science." 

Monboddo : 

" Those who have studied mathematics much, and no other science, 
are apt to grow so fond of them, as to believe that there is no certainty 
in any other science, nor any other axioms than those of Euclid." 2 

De Stael : 

" The mathematics lead us to lay out of account all that is not proved ; 
while the primitive truths, those which sentiment and genius apprehend, 
are not susceptible of demonstration." 3 

This tendency in their too exclusive cultivation, to promote a 
disbelief in any other than an order of necessity and nature, is 
common to the physical and the mathematical sciences ; hence, in 
reference to the former, the old adage — " Tres Medici, duoAthei.^ 
It is, however, when the two studies are conjoined and carried 
out to the most extensive sphere of application, that this tendency 
is more powerfully and conspicuously manifested — that is, in 
astronomy. 

In the following sublime passage, Kant, with a different inten- 
tion indeed, finely illustrates the opposite influences of material 
and mental studies, and this by the contrast of the two noblest 
objects of our contemplation : 

" Two things there are, which, the oftener and the more steadfastly we 
consider, fill the mind with an ever new, an ever rising admiration and 
reverence — the Starry Heaven above, the Moral laiv within. Of neither 
am I compelled to seek out the existence, as shrouded in obscurity, or 
only to surmise the possibility, as beyond the hemisphere of my knowledge. 
Both I contemplate lying clear before me, and connect both immediately 
with the consciousness of my being. — The one departs from the place I 
occupy in the outer world of sense ; expands, beyond the limits of imagin- 
ation, that connection of my being with worlds, rising above worlds, and 
systems blending into systems ; and protends it also to the illimitable times 
of their periodic movement — to its commencement and continuance. — The 
other departs from my invisible self, from my personality ; and represents 

1 Works, iii. p. 107. 2 Ancient Metaphysics, i. p. 394. 

3 Dc VAllemagne, i. c. 18. 



MATHEMATICS INDUCE SKEPTICISM. 301 

me in a world, truly infinite indeed, but whose infinity is to be fathomed 
only by the intellect, with which also my connection, unlike the fortuitous 
relation I stand in to the world of sense, I am compelled to recognize, as 
necessary and universal. — In the former, the first view of a countless mul- 
titude of worlds annihilates, as it were, my importance as an animal na- 
ture, which, after a brief and incomprehensible endowment with the pow- 
ers of life, is compelled to refund its constituent matter to the planet — 
itself an atom in the universe — on which it grew. — The aspect of the 
other, on the contrary, elevates my worth as an intelligence, even to infin- 
itude ; and this through my personality, in which the moral law reveals 
a faculty of life independent of my animal nature, nay, of the whole ma- 
terial world : — at least, if it be permitted to infer as much from the reg- 
ulation of my being, which a conformity with that law exacts ; proposing, 
as it does, my moral worth for the absolute end of my activity, conced- 
ing no compromise of its imperative to a necessitation of nature, and spurn- 
ing in its infinity the limits and conditions of my present transitory life." 1 

"Spirat enim majora animus seque altius effert 
Sideribus, transitque vias et nubila fati, 
Et momenta premit pedibus qusecunque putantur 
Figere propositam natali tempore sortem." 2 

As a pendant to this, we shall adduce another testimony by a 

profound philosopher of an opposite school ; by him whom his 

countrymen have hailed the Plato of the latter age, — Frederic 

Henry Jacobi. 

" What, in opposition to Fate, constitutes the ruling principle of the 
universe into a true God, is termed Providence. Where there is no fore- 
cast there is no intelligence, and where intelligence is, there also is there 
providence. This alone is mind ; and only to what is of mind, respond 
the feelings that manifest its existence in ourselves — Wonder, Veneration, 
Love. We can, indeed, pronounce an object to be beautiful or perfect, 
without a previous knowledge that it is the work of foresight or not : but 
the power by which it was produced, that we can not admire, if, without 
thought, and without a purpose, it operated in obedience to the laws of a 
mere physical necessity. Even the glorious majesty of the heavens, the 
object of a kneeling adoration to an infant world, subdues no more the 
mind of him who comprehends the one mechanical law by which the 
planetary systems move, maintain their motion, and even originally form 
themselves. He no longer marvels at the object, infinite as it always is, 
but at the human intellect alone, which, in a Copernicus, Kepler, Gas- 
sendi, Newton, and Laplace, was able to transcend the object, by science 
to terminate the miracle, to reave the heaven of its divinities, and to dis- 
enchant the universe. — But even this, the only admiration of which our 
intelligent faculties are now capable, would vanish, were a future Hartley, 
Darwin, Condillac, or Bonnet, to succeed in displaying to us a mechani- 
cal system of the human mind, as comprehensive, intelligible, and satis- 
factory as the Newtonian mechanism of the heavens. Fallen from their 
elevation, Art, and Science, and Virtue, would no longer be to man the 
objects of a genuine and reflective adoration. The works and actions of 

1 Cr. d. pr. V. Beschluss. This suggests Prudentius. 

2 Prudent. Contra Sym. ii. 479. 



302 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

the heroes of mankind — the life of a Socrates and Epaminondas — the 
science of a Plato and Leibnitz — the poetical and plastic representations 
of a Homer. Sophocles and Phidias — these might still pleasurably move, 
might still rouse the mind to an enjoyment rising into transport ; even so 
as the sensible aspect of the heavens might still possibly affect and grat- 
ify the disciple of a Newton or Laplace : but we must no longer ask about 
the principle of our emotion ; for reflection would infallibly chide our pu- 
erile infatuation, and dash our enthusiasm by the suggestion — That Won- 
der is only the daughter of Ignorance" 1 

We shall terminate our cloud of witnesses with the testimony 
of a celebrated metaphysician, a distinguished professor also of 
mathematics and physics in one of the principal universities of 
Germany. Fries, in his Lectures on Astronomy thus speaks : 

But it is rejoined — You explain every thing by your omnipotent gravi- 
tation ; — what is the origin of that ? I answer : — This, too, we know 
full well ! The daughter of the old blind Fate, her servants Magnitude, 
Number, and Proportion, her inheritance a universe without a God, which 

requires no God When the great astronomer Lalande denied a 

deity — could trace in the heavens no God, in the movement of the stars 
no finger of God, we are compelled to allow the logical consequence of his 
reasoning. That high order and adaptation of end and means is only the 
product of the rigid mechanism of necessary physical laws; there, above, 
is only a blind mindless destiny, the absolute ruler of its universe. But I 
appeal to the truth of the saying in St. John, " In the spirit only shall 
we Worship* God ;" and in what only our science is for mind, are its dig- 
nity and value to be found. He alone can style the order of the universe 
an adaptation of means to end, who brings to its observation a belief in 
the reality of design. But the true interpretation of the order of design, 
lies far more clearly aprparent in the mind of man. The infinite spirit 
does not bail itself under proportion and number ! The play with num- 
ber is an easy play — its joy only the joy of the imprisoned spirit at the 
clank of its fetters." 2 

Are Mathematics then of no value as an instrument of mental 

1 [Wcrkc, ii. p. 54. — The philosophy of the modern Plato is, in this respect, strictly 
correspondent with the philosophy of the ancient. " The doctrine," (to this effect 
speaks the Athenian), " which has propagated impiety among men, and occasioned 
all erroneous opinions concerning the nature of the Deity : is that, which reversing the 
real consecution of existence, affirms in regard to the generation of the universe, that 
to be posterior which is, in truth, the cause ; and that to be antecedent, which is only 
the effect. For, though mind and its operations are anterior to matter and its phae- 
nomena, and though nature and natural production are preceded and determined by 
intelligence and design ; some, however, have preposterously sisted nature as the first 
or generative principle, and regarded mind, as merely the derivative of corporeal organ- 
ism." (Dc Lcgibus, x.) The relative passage of Plato is, I see, quoted by the great 
Cudworth, (in Cambridge, " there were giants in those days,") in his Immutable Mo- 
rality (B. iv. ch. 6, § 6. sq.) (In connection with this matter, I may here notice a 
monstrous erratum (§ 24) which stands, both in the English edition of that posthumous 
work, procured by Chandler, Bishop of Durham, and, what is more remarkable, in the 
Latin version by the learned Mosheim ; contemplation for contcmperalion.)'] 

• Vorlesungcn ueber die Sternkunde, pp. 16, 18, 227. 



MATHEMATICS INDUCE SKEPTICISM. 303 

culture ? Nay, do they exercise only to distort the mind ? To 
this we answer : That their study, if pursued in moderation and 
efficiency counteracted, may he beneficial in the correction of a 
certain vice, and in the formation of its corresponding virtue. 
The vice is the habit of mental distraction ; the virtue the habit 
of continuous attention. This is the single benefit, to which the 
study of mathematics can justly pretend, in the cultivation of the 
mind; and it is almost the one only, or at least the one principal, 
accorded to it by the most intelligent philosophers. — -Bacon, who 
in his earlier writings admitted the utility of mathematics in 
sharpening the intellect ; in his maturer works recommended a 
study of the school philosophy, as the best discipline of subtility 
and discrimination. 1 — In like manner, the mathematical philoso- 
pher Du Hamel seems to accord no higher mental advantage to 
the mathematics ; and at the same time observes, that " they 
have this of vice, that for the most part they render us alien and 
abhorrent from the business of life" 2 - — Of mathematical science 
Warburton holds, that besides affording us a knowledge of its 
peculiar method, " all its use, for the purpose in question (the 
improvement of the powers of reasoning), seems to be only habi- 
tuating the mind to think long and closely ; and it would be well 
if this advantage made amends for some inconveniences, as in- 
separable from it." 3 — This, likewise, is all that is admitted of 
the study by one of the most acute and cautious observers of the 
human mind and its modifications, and whose predilections, if we 
could suppose him biased, were naturally all in favor of its im- 

1 In the first edition of his Essays, published in 1597, Bacon says, '* Mathematiks 
make men subtill ;" but having learned better in the interval, in the second, which 
appeared fifteen years thereafter, he withdrew this commendation, and substituted the 
following, which stands unaltered in all the after editions ; — " If a man's wit be wan- 
dering, let him study the mathematiks ; for in demonstrations if his thought be called 
ever so littie away he must begin again ; if his wit be not apt to distinguish or find 
differences [i. e. be not subtile], let him study the schoolmen, for they are the Cymini 
sectores." — By-the-by, a mistake as to the meaning of the adage. — (Essay on Studies.) 
[Here there is, I find, an oversight. Though at a different place of the same Essay. 
" Mathematics" are said to " make men subtile ;" and this even in the last editions of 
the work.] In like manner, in The Advancement of Learning, published in 1605, he 
says of mathematics, " If the wit be too dull, they sharpen it ; if too wandering, they 
fix it; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it." (Book II. Mathematique.) But 
in the relative place of the De Augmentis Scientiarum, the great work in which, after 
a meditation of eighteen years, the Advancement was corrected, remodeled, and greatly 
enlarged, he disallows the first and third of these utilities, and admits only the second. 
" Si cuipiam ingenium tale est quale est avium, ut facile abripiatur, nee per moram 
(qualem oportet) intentum esse, sustineat ; remedium huic rei pra^bebunt mathematica, 
in quibus si evagetur paulo mens, de integro renovanda est demonstratio." (L. vi. c. 4.) 

* De Mente Humana, L. i. c. 8. :) Julian, Pre/., p. xviii. 



304 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

portance — we mean Mr. Dug aid Stewart. A skillful mathema- 
tician, his writings abound with allusions to that science ; but 
we make bold to say, that there is not to be found in the whole 
compass of his works a single passage attributing another or a 
higher advantage to mathematical study, in relation to the mind, 
than that of "strengthening the power of steady and concatenated 
thinking." Nay, when controverting Mr. Hume's contemptuous 
estimate of the utility and importance of mathematics, and when 
thus called upon to specify their various uses, he ascribes to them 
any value, not as affording a profitable exercise of mind, but ex- 
clusively, "as an organ of physical discovery, and as the founda- 
tion of some of the most necessary arts of civilized life." 1 And, 
in the chapter of his Philosophy of the Human Mind, entitled, 
The Mathematician — a chapter admirable alike for its depth and 
its candor— the improvement of the power of continuous attention 
is the only benefit which he admits ; and that, likewise, to the 
express exclusion of the mechanical process of the algebraic anal- 
ysis — an exclusion in which he is supported by the highest prac- 
tical authorities in education. " This command of attention, how- 
ever, it may be proper to add, is to be acquired, not by practice 
of the modern methods, but by the study of the Greek geometry ; 
more particularly, by accustoming ourselves to pursue long trains 
of demonstration, without availing ourselves of the aid of any sen- 
sible diagrams ; the thoughts being directed solely to those ideal 
delineations which the powers of conception and of memory enable 
us to form." 5 

[This observation of Stewart suggests the propriety of stating 
more articulately the contrast of the two species of mathematics 
— the Geometric or Ostensive, and the Algebraic or Symbolical. 
The former was invented, and exclusively cultivated, in antiquity; 
the latter, which owes its origin to the Arabians, has been princi- 
pally perfected during the two last centuries. These species of 
mathematics differ in their methods ; exert a different influence 
on their student ; and merit cultivation, by different persons, and 
for different ends. The Greometric process is of a minor advan- 
tage in education ; whereas the study of the Algebraic, if carried 
beyond a very limited extent, is positively disadvantageous. As 
instruments of science, however, and where the mathematician is 
considered, not as an end to himself, but as a mean toward an 

1 Dissertation, &c. p. 171. 3 Elements, vol. ill. p. 267. 



COMPARATIVE USE OF GEOMETRIC AND ALGEBRAIC STUDY. 305 

end out of himself, their comparative superiority is reversed. For, 
in the Geometric method, while the movement is more tedious, 
no step is possible without consciousness and a certain self-ac- 
tivity ; whereas the Algebraic, though a more rapid process, works 
out its result by a mechanical operation, and with hardly any 
awakening of thought. The one thus affords, in some respects, 
an improving exercise to any; the other a convenient instrument, 
improving to none, and useful only to a few. 

The opinion of Neivton himself upon this point is given by his 
friend and expositor, Dr. Pemberton, whose words in the Preface 
to his " View of Sif Isaac Newton's Philosophy" are as follows : 

" I have often heard him censure the handling geometrical subjects by 
algebraic calculations; and his book of Algebra he called by the name 
of Universal Arithmetic, in opposition to the injudicious title of Geometry, 
which Descartes had given to the treatise, wherein he shows how the 
geometer may assist his invention by such kind of computations. He fre- 
quently praised Slusius, Barrow, and Huygens for not being influenced by 
the false taste ivhich then began to 'prevail. He used to commend the 
laridable attempt of Hugo de Omerique to restore the ancient analysis, 
and very much esteemed Apollonius's book De Sectione Hationis, for giv- 
ing us a clearer notion of that analysis than we had before. Dr. Barrow 
may be esteemed as having shown a compass of invention equal, if not 
superior to any of the moderns, our author only excepted ; but Sir Isaac 
Newton has several times particularly recommended to me Huygen's style 
and manner. He thought him the most elegant of any mathematical 
tvriter of modern times, and the most just imitator of the ancients. Of 
their taste and form of demonstration Sir Isaac always professed himself a 
great admirer. I have heard him even censure himself for not folloiving 
them more closely than he did [yet he demonstrated every thing osten- 
sively] ; and speak with regret of his mistake at the beginning of his 
mathematical studies, in applying himself to the works of Descartes and 
other algebraic writers, before he had considered the Elements of Euclid 
with that attention which so excellent a writer deserves." 1 

Sir Isaac was conscious that if ever the handmaid should sup- 
plant the mistress—if ever devotion to the algebraic method 
should supersede the cultivation of the geometric, then would 
mathematics sink from the rank of a liberal study into something 
little better than a handicraft dexterity. "What would he have 
said, had he foreseen the present degeneracy of his own university ! 

The next authority which I adduce is that of the profoundest 
thinker whom Italy produced during the last century ; one in 
fact, so far ahead of his own age, that it remained for ours to ap- 
preciate those great views in politics and history which the phi- 



1 View, &c. Pref. p. ii. 

u 



306 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

Josophers of his own country, France, and Germany, are now emu- 
lously engaged in expounding, vindicating, and applying. The 
following quotation is from an address, which Vico was in the 
habit of annually delivering to the academical youth, on the selec- 
tion and conduct of their studies : 

" The practice of giving to young men the elements of the science of 
magnitude on the algebraic method, chills all that is lively and vigorous 
in the youthful mind, clouds the imagination, debilitates the memory, 
thills the ingenuity, and enervates the intellect; which four are the 
things most necessary for the cultivation of the best pursuits of human- 
ity ; the first for painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry, and elo- 
quence ; the second for the learning of languages ami of history; the third 
for invention ; the fourth for wisdom. . . . And thus with the Algebraic 
calculus the i?igenuity is repressed, because in this process we perceive 
not even what lies most immediately before us ; — the memory is stupefied, 
because the second sign being discovered, we no longer take thought about 
the first ; — the imagination is benighted, because we imagine to our- 
selves absolutely nothing ; — the intellect is ruined, because we substitute 
divination for reasoning ; — in so much that those young men who have 
spent much time in this study have afterward, to their utmost sorrow 
and repentance, found themselves disqualified for the business of real 
life. And therefore, in order to render it productive of any benefit, and 
unproductive of those evils which it might otherwise cause, Algebra ought 
to be studied for a short time at the close of the mathematical course. . . , 
When, in order to find the required quantity, we should have to encounter 
great mental fatigue by using the Synthetic method, we ought then to 
have recourse to the Algebraic Analysis. But in so far as regards rea- 
soning well by this sort of method, it is better to acquire the liabit by 
Metaphysical Analysis. 1 

The last testimony which I shall adduce, in regard to the oppo- 
site characters, and the different importance of the two species of 
Mathematics, in an educational point of view, is that of Thiersch, 
one of the most illustrious scholars of Europe, and not inferior to 
any authority in matters of education. The following quotation 
I rudely translate from his work on Learned Schools, in con- 
formity to the views of which the national seminaries of Bavaria 
have been principally modeled and reformed. It is to be noticed 
that his observations, though relative to Gymnasia and Lycsea — 
an order of learned schools in Germany inferior to the Universities 
— apply to a class of students in general more advanced than those 
who matriculate in Cambridge. 

<: In order that Mathematical science should be more perfectly accom- 
modated to the end which a Gymnasium proposes, and brought into so 
intimate a relation with the other branches of study that it may be viewed 

1 Operc Complete, i. p. 31. 



COMPARATIVE USE OF GEOMETRIC AND ALGEBRAIC STUDY. 307 

as their complement and equipoise, it is necessary to bring back its method 
to the procedure of the ancients — of Euclid, of Archimedes, and of Apol- 

louius of Perga 

" Though never abandoning the confines of the universal, Geometry 
reduces the laws and attributes of magnitude to perfect clearness- — by 
according to the senses a representation of those lines, surfaces, and solids 
which it conceives with the utmost completeness and precision; and thus 
issuing forth from behind the vail of mental invisibility into the visible 
and palpable, its doctrines may almost be seen and handled, and yet with- 
out losing aught of their purity and necessity. Thus Geometry, if I may 
so express myself, becomes a thinking with the eye, while Grammar 
through the ear holds intercourse with the inner mind. This relation of 
its laws to determinate figures, this apprehension of the highest and most 
surprising doctrines through the visibility of body, is precisely what at 
once attracts and animates the young — what gradually elevates and pre- 
pares for high abstraction their powers as yet incapable of such an exer- 
cise. On this account all employment of the Algebraic formula even for 
conic sections, ought to be discarded from the Geometry of the Gym- 
nasium. Essential as these are to the Mathematician, in order to rise to 
the higher regions of his science, they are profitless and even hurtful in 
the course of discipline preparatory to its acquisition, and in the general 
cultivation of youth, inasmuch as they are only the repetition in another 
form, of a procedure already familiar. He who five or six times trans- 
poses or transforms a given equation so as in the end to obtain a solution, 
teaching him, for example, that a projectile in its flight describes a para- 
bolic curve ; — to be conducted, I say, to this important result as by an in- 
visible constraining force, rapidly and unerringly, indeed — this will content 
him if an adept in Mathematics ; but to the student it is profitless, inas- 
much as the compulsory conclusion only exhibits to him in a new formula 
what he already knew by superfluous experience to be true. But some- 
thing more than this is obtained by him who reaches the same truth by 
the Geometrical procedure of the ancients, in which Algebra was un- 
known, viz., by the constructive method of figures and the intuition 
founded on it. While the Algebraic formulae conduct us blindfold to the 
conclusion, the constructive method of Archimedes shows to us the whole 
machinery of the procedure laid open to the light, especially when the 
omission of the intermediate propositions is supplied by an intelligent 
teacher. Here every step is made with open eyes, with consciousness, 
and understanding; and, in the example adduced, from the harmonic con- 
nection of figures, and from the consequences fully and lucidly evolved 
out of their properties, the result is finally obtained of the parabolic flight 
of projectiles. The same is the case with every other law, each being dis- 
played to the view of the satisfied and admiring pupil, as a consequence 
clear and rigorous. Nothing can be better calculated than such a process 
to awaken the intellect to the clearest apprehension of the nature and 
cogency of strict probation ; and thus to place it in possession of itself and 
its highest faculty — that of deducing what it sought from what is given, 
Avhat is invisible from what is seen, in order, like Archimedes, from a 
point beyond the earth to move the earth itself. What therefore is requi- 
site, and even indispensable, is a complete and systematic manual of 
Geometry on the principles of Euclid, Archimedes, and Apollonius Per- 
gseus, which, assuming their capital propositions, and connecting these 



808 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

with others, would afford a comprehensive view of constructive Geometry, 
in the spirit of antiquity, for the instruction, awakening, and improvement 
of youth." x 

Nay, the present predominance in Cambridge of the Algebraic 
Mathematics (a predominance perhaps partly owing to the re- 
proach cast by Playfair, some forty years ago, on the ignorance 
prevalent in Cambridge of the Continental analysis, but which, 
assuredly, is no longer applicable, seeing that the second English 
University, the second Theological Seminary of the Anglican Es- 
tablishment, is now a second-rate Ecole Polytechnique) — this is 
lamented, and its effect, as a slaughtering of intellect, reluctantly 
confessed, by the most intelligent friends of Cambridge herself. 
The two following extracts from the Quarterly Review may suf- 
fice to prove this ; for that journal has always been the cham- 
pion of the actual system of the English Universities, where this 
could with any justice be defended. — The first is from an able 
article on Paley ; and it is justly considered as a sign of his un- 
common intellectual vigor (and this even before Cambridge had 
again turned Anti-Newtonian and Algebraic), that he was senior 
wrangler, yet his mind not apparently enfeebled by the exertion. 

" The Cambridge system of study is a forcing system, which applying 
itself almost wholly to one subject, and being adapted to minds of a 
single cast, frequently debilitates, the understanding through life, by the 
effort to produce a single fruitage." 2 

What can be confessed — what can be conceived, worse of a 
University ? 

The second extract is from an intelligent article on the Life of 
Bishop Watson. 

" The period at which Watson appeared in the University of Cam- 
bridge may justly be regarded as the Augustan age of that University ; 
the physics of Descartes had just before [Watson entered the University in 
1757, that is seventy years after the publication of the Principia], given 
place to the sublime Geometry of Newton ; the Metaphysics of human 
nature, as taught by Locke, had supplanted Aristotle ; and the old scho- 
lastic Theology had been superseded in the schools by a set of rising and 
enlightened divines, under a learned and candid professor it was certainly 
to the advantage of the academical studies that the higher Algebra was 
not yet invented, [?] and that the study of philosophy [i. e. physics] in 
general was not hitherto pushed so far as either to engross or to exhaust 
the understanding of the academical youth. A due place was also allow- 
ed and required for classical pursuits, while the purest writers of antiquity 
were studied, not so much for the purpose of consummating the knowl- 
edge of points and metres, as of acquiring the noblest ideas of morals and 

1 Ueber gekhrten Schulen, iv. Abth. p. 374, seq. s Vol. ix. p. 390 



TRUE USE OF MATHEMATICAL STUDY. 309 

politics in the clearest and most elegant language. Precisely at this period 
arose a constellation of young men eminently qualified, both by the force 
of their understandings and the elegance of their taste, to avail themselves 
of these advantages ; and the names of Hurd and Powell, of Balguy, and 
Ogdeu, are never heard by those who knew them or know their books, 
without the associated ideas of all that is clear in ratiocination, profound 
in research, and beautiful in language. As they disappeared from the 
scene, abstract mathematics began to prevail in the university ; the 
equilibrium of study was destroyed ; the liberal and manly system of edu- 
cation which had produced so many men of business and of the world, as 
well as of science, gradually disappeared : while the rewards which be- 
came necessary as stimuli to the higher acquirements of classical litera- 
ture, tended to urge on the pursuits of difficult and recondite minutiae in 
criticism, as inapplicable, in one way, to any practical purpose of life, as 
the obscurities of Waring's Miscellanea Analytica, in another. The effects 
of this declension are but too visible at present in a hard, dry, ' exsuccous' 
style of writing, which has long since superseded, excepting in one or two 
solitary instances, the attic graces of the last generation." 1 

But returning from our digressive contrast of the ostensive and 
symbolical, of the geometric and algebraic processes, in an educa- 
tional point of view ; and calling to mind, that the former had, 
exclusively of the latter, been proposed as a mean conducive to 
the one sole intellectual virtue of continuous attention : we pro- 
ceed to consider, how far the study of geometry may pretend to 
he the appropriate discipline even of this.] 

But mathematics are not the only study which cultivates the 
attention ; neither is the kind and degree of attention which they 
tend to induce, the kind and degree of attention which our other 
and higher speculations require and exercise. In the study of 
mathematics we are accustomed, if we may so express ourselves, 
to a protensive, rather than to either an extensive, a comprehen- 
sive, or an intensive, application of thought. It does not compel 
us to hold up before the mind, and to retain the mind upon, a 
multitude of different objects ; far less does it inure us to a steady 
consideration of the fugitive and evanescent abstractions and gene- 
ralities of the reflective intellect. Mr. Kirivan truly observes : — 
" As to Mathematics habituating the mind to intense application 
there is no science that does not equally require it, and, in study- 
ing it, the habit is much more advantageously obtained.^ 2 And 
Madame de Stael admirably says: — "I shall be told, I know, 
that Mathematics render the attention peculiarly close (appliquee) ; 
but they do not habituate to collect, to appreciate, to concentrate; 
the attention they require is, so to speak, in a straight line ; the 

1 Vol. xviii. p. 235. a Logick, I. preface, p. 6. 



310 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS 

human mind acts in mathematics as a spring 1 tending- in one uni~ 
form direction." 1 

We should remember also that the minds for whose peculiar 
malady a course of mathematics, as the appropriate specific, is 
prescribed, are precisely those which will not, in fact, can not, 
submit to the prescription. " In vain" (observes Du Hamel) 
"do we promulgate rules for awakening attention, if the disposi- 
tion be headlong, instable, presumptuous. Besides, all applica- 
tion of the mind is an act of will, and the will can not be com- 
pelled." 2 — After all, we are afraid that Vices and IT Alembert are 
right : Mathematics may distort, but can never rectify, the mind. 
But although of slender, and even ambiguous utility, as a gym- 
nastic of the intellect, mathematics are not undeserving of atten- 
tion, as supplying to the metaphysician and psychologist some 
interesting materials of speculation. The notions, and method, 
and progress of these sciences are curious, both in themselves, 
and in contrast to those of philosophy. Although, therefore, the 
inscription over Plato's school be but a. comparatively modern 
fiction, we are willing to admit its truth — nay, aia decidedly of 
opinion, that mathematics ought to be cultivated, to a certain 
extent, by every one who would devote himself to the higher 
philosophy. But, on the other hand, we agree with Socrates, 
who " disapproved of the study of geometry" (and he says the 
same of astronomy), " when carried the length of its more diffi- 
cult diagrams. For, though himself not inconversant with these," 
(which he had studied under the celebrated geometer, Theodoras 
of Cyrene), "he did not perceive of what utility they could be, 
calculated as they were to consume the life of a man, and to turn 
him away from many other and important acquirements." 3 

We must now abruptly terminate. Our limits are already 
greatly exceeded. But we must still state, in a few words, what 
many sentences would be required to develope. 

In extending so partial an encouragement to mathematical and 
physical pursuits, thus indirectly discouraging the other branches 
of liberal education, the University of Cambridge has exactly re- 
versed every principle of academical policy. — What are the grounds 
on which one study ought to be forstered or forced, in such a 
seminary, in preference to others ? 

The first and principal condition of academical encouragement 

1 De VAllcmagne, I. c. 18. 2 De Mente Humana, 1. i. c. 8. 

3 Xenopkontist Memorabilia, 1. iv. c. 7, §§ 3, 5. 



CAMBRIDGE SYSTEM ABSURD. 311 

is, that the study tends to cultivate a greater number of the nobler 
faculties in a higher degree. That the study of mathematics 
effects any mental development, at best, in a most inadequate 
and precarious manner, while its too exclusive cultivation tends 
positively to incapacitate and to deform the mind — this it has 
been the scope of the preceding argument to establish. 

The second condition is, that the protected study comprehends 
within its sphere of operation a larger proportion of the academic 
youth. It can easily be shown that, in this respect, mathematics 
have less claim to encouragement than any other object of educa- 
tion. [They present no allurement for those not constrained to a 
degree ; they qualify for none of the professions ; and Cambridge 
stands alone in turning out her clergy, accomplished for actuaries 
or engineers, it may be, but unaccomplished for divines.] 

The third is, that it is of greater general utility for the conduct 
of the business or for the enjoyment of the leisure of after life. 
— In regard to the business : — For men in general, no study is 
more utterly worthless than that of mathematics. In regard to 
the leisure : — For which, as Aristotle properly observes, a liberal 
education ought equally to provide, this study is of even less im- 
portance than for the business. No academical pursuit has so 
few extra-academical votaries. The reasons are manifest. In 
the first place, mathematics, to be spontaneously loved, require a 
more peculiar constitution of mind and temperament than any 
other intellectual pursuit. In the second, as observed by Plato, 
no study forced in the school is ever voluntarily cultivated in life ; 
(Wv%f) (3icuov ovfiev e/ju/jievh fjbdOrjfjba). In the third, to use the 
words of Seneca : — " Some things, once known, stick fast ; others 
it is not enough to have learnt, our knowledge of them perishing 
when we cease to learn. Such are mathematics." 1 — The maxim, 
" Non scholae sed vitse discendum," is thus, in every relation, by 
the University of Cambridge, reversed. 

The fourth is, that, independently of its own importance, it is 
the passport to other important branches of knowledge. In this 
respect mathematical sciences (pure and applied) stand alone ; to 
the other branches of knowledge they conduce — to none directly, 
and if indirectly to any, the advantage they afford is small, con- 
tingent and dispensable. 

The fifth is, that, however important, absolutely and relatively, 
it is yet of such a nature, that, without an external stimulus, it 

1 De Beneficiis, 1. iii. c. 5. [See also Vives, above, p. 290.] 



312 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS. 

will not be so generally and so thoroughly cultivated as it deserves. 
Mathematics, certainly, from the nature of their study, require 
such stimulus; the question is — Do they deserve it? 

We can not conclude, without strongly expressing our sincere 
respect for the venerable school of which, in this article, we have 
endeavored to expose a modern abuse. With all its defects, there 
is even now, in the spirit of the place, what, were its mighty 
means all as well directed as some already are, would raise it in 
every faculty, in every department, to the highest rank among 
the European universities. Some parts of the reform are diffi- 
cult, and must be accomplished from without. Others are com- 
paratively easy, and, it is not too much to hope, may be determ- 
ined from within. Of these, the first and most manifest improve- 
ment would be the establishment of three Triposes of co-ordinate 
and independent honors ; of which one should comprise the differ- 
ent departments of philosophy proper, ancient, and modern — an- 
other the mathematical and physical sciences — and a third the 
multifarious branches of classics, classical philology, history, 6cc. 
We can not add a word in reference to the expediency and details 
of such a plan; but, in allusion to a philosophical Tripos, a noble 
testimony to the influence of metaphysical and moral studies in 
the improvement of the mind, rises to our recollection, which, as 
peculiarly appropriate to the occasion, we can not refrain from 
adducing. It is by one of the acutest of thinkers — the elder 
Scaliger. — " Harum indagatio subtilitatum etsi non est utilis ad 
machinas farinarias conficiendas, exuit tamen animum inscitiae 
rubigine, acuitque ad alia. Eo denique splendore afficit, ut prae- 
luceat sibi ad nanciscendum primi opificis similitudinem. Q,ui 
ut omnia plene ac perfecte est, at praeter, et supra omnia ; ita eos 
qui scientiarum studiosi sunt, suos esse voluit, ipsorumque intel- 
lectum rerum dominum constituit." 1 

1 De Suhtilitate, Exerc. cccvii. 3. [When this was quoted, the fuller extract above 
(p. 40.) was in abeyance.] 






NOTE, 

TOUCHING THE PRECEDING ARTICLE. 



(April, 1836.) 



It is contrary to our practice to publish any answers or com- 
plaints, by authors dissatisfied with our criticisms ; but we are 
induced to make an exception of Mr. Whewell. He complains, 
that we have not fairly stated the purport of his recent publica- 
tion on the Study of Mathematics. The nature of the charge, 
and the great respectability of the gentleman by whom it is made, 
render it impossible for us to be altogether silent ; we, therefore, 
reprint his letter (which has already appeared both in the News- 
papers, and in the second edition of his Pamphlet 1 ), with a few 
observations under the form of Notes, in vindication of ourselves 
— [Editor.] 



" To the Editor of the Edinburgh Review. 

Cabibridge, Jan. 23d, 1836. 
"My Dear Sir — I was gratified to find that a little pamphlet 
which I recently published, as ' Thoughts on the Study of Mathe- 
matics,' had excited so much notice as to give it a place at the 
head of an article in the Edinburgh Review ; — and in regard to 
the manner in which the Reviewer has spoken of me, I have cer- 
tainly no reason to be dissatisfied ; nor am I at all disposed to 
complain of the way in which he has urged his own opinions. 
But I think the article is likely to give rise to a misapprehension 
which ought to be corrected ; and for that purpose I trouble you 
with this letter. 



1 [This Letter Mr. Whewell republished also in the following year at the end of his 
book "On the Principles of English University Education" — but without the notes in 
reply — For that book and for the Preface to his Mechanics, on both of which I shall 
be obliged to comment, I am indebted to the politeness of the author- 



314 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS— NOTE. 

• I wrote my pamphlet in order to enforce certain views re- 
specting the conduct of our mathematical examinations at Cam- 
bridge. The question on which I threw out a few ' Thoughts' 
was, what kind of mathematics is most beneficial as a part of a 
liberal education. That this was the question to which I was 
trying to give some answer I stated in a passage (quoted by the 
Reviewer) at page 8 of the pamphlet. The previous seven pages, 
in which among other matter I had said a few words on the ques- 
tion, whether mathematics in general, or logic is the better men- 
tal discipline, were obviously only an introduction to the discus- 
sion of certain propositions, which, as the Reviewer observes, 
'occupy the remainder of the pamphlet.' (1) 

" It was therefore with no slight surprise that I looked at the 
magnificent manner in which the Reviewer has spoken of the 
small portion of these seven small pages which refers to the more 
general question. He calls it ' a treatise (a Treatise !) apparently 
on the very point' (2), (p. 259), ' a vindication of mathematical 
study' (3), (p. 260) ; and having thus made me work at a task of 
his own devising, he repeatedly expresses great disappointment 
that I have executed it so ill ; — that ' so little is said on the gen- 
eral argument.' I should have thought that this circumstance 
might have helped him to perceive that it was not my general 
argument. 

" I see nothing but the convenient and blameless practice of 
Reviews in making the title of my book the occasion of publish- 
ing an Essay on a subject only slightly connected with mine ; 
but it appears to me that to attempt to gain a victory by repre- 
senting a page or two of my ' Thoughts' as containing all that 
can be said by an able, earnest, official advocate on the other 
side, is not a reasonable treatment of the question. The writer 
proclaims that he means to give ' no quarter to my reasonings ;' 
but this proceeding looks rather like making an unexpected at- 
tack on a point when he thinks himself well prepared, on the 
arbitrary pretext that the truce has been broken by the adver- 
sary. (4) 

" I should have no disinclination on a convenient occasion, to 
discuss the very important and interesting question which is the 
subject of the Review. I can not, however, look forward with 
confidence to the prospect of my being able to take it up for a 
considerable period ; and shall probably leave the Reviewer in 
possession of his self-chosen field of battle for several months, it 



MR. WHK WELL'S LETTER. 315 

may be years. But if I should return to the subject, I should 
wish to know, as definitely as is possible, what are the questions 
at issue between us ; (5) and I would therefore beg from the 
Reviewer information on the following points : 

" The "Works which form our examples of Mathematical reason- 
ing are well known ; I wish to know also what works of ' Prac- 
tical Logic' On other subjects (p. 263) the Reviewer is willing to 
propose as rival instruments of education. (6) 

" I wish to have some distinct account of the nature of that 
' Philosophy' which is by the Reviewer put in contrast to Ma- 
thematical study (p. 272) ; and if possible to have some work or 
works pointed out, in which this Philosophy is supposed to be 
presented in such a way as to make it fit to be a cardinal point 
of education. 

"I may remark also, that all the Reviewer's arguments, and, I 
believe, the judgments of all his ' cloud of witnesses,' are found- 
ed upon the nature and processes of pure mathematics only ; — 
on a consideration of the study of the mere properties of space 
and number. My suggestion of the means of increasing the util- 
ity of mathematical studies was directed mainly to this point ; — 
that we should avoid confining ourselves to pure mathematics ; 
— that we should resort to departments in which we have to deal 
with other grounds of necessary truth, as well as the intuitions 
of space and time : so far, therefore, the Reviewer and I have a 
common aim, and I notice this with the more pleasure, since we 
have so far a better prospect of understanding each other in any 
future discussion. (7) 

" I will not now trespass further on your patience. In order 
to remind my Cambridge readers of the state of the question, I 
shall probably place before them something to the same effect as 
what I have now written. 

"Believe me, my dear Sir, 

" Yours very faithfully, 

"W. Whewell." 



316 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS— NOTE. 



Notes on the preceding Letter. 

(1) We of course willingly admit whatever Mr. Whewell says 
was his intention in writing his pamphlet ; but we must be al- 
lowed to maintain that, as written, our view of its purport (in re- 
commendation and defense of mathematics in general, as a mean 
of liberal education) is the view which every reader, looking either 
at the title of the treatise, or at the distribution and conduct of 
its argument, must necessarily adopt. The title is — "Thoughts 
on the Study of Mathematics, as a part of a Liberal Education." 
The pamphlet opens with a statement of the two counter-opinions 
in regard to the study of mathematics, as a mental discipline ; — • 
the one holding it to be highly beneficial, the other, highly detri- 
mental. Mr. Whewell then proceeds : "Any view of this subject 
which would show us how far and under what circumstances 
each of these opinions is true, would probably help us to see how 
we must regulate our studies so as to make them most benefi- 
cial," &c. " It is in this belief that the few reflections which fol- 
low have been written." The plan of the work being thus laid 
down, the author goes on to accomplish the first part of his un- 
dertaking, by endeavoring to show, that the former opinion is 
absolutely true ; inasmuch as the study of mathematics is con- 
ducive, even more than logic, to the cultivation of the reasoning 
faculty. This being done, he passes to the second part, and en- 
deavors to show, that the latter opinion is conditionally true, in- 
asmuch as certain modes of teaching the science, to which Mr. 
Whewell is opposed, are given up as worthy of all condemnation. 
These two parts are, ex facie libri, co-ordinate; nay, so far is the 
first part, though occupying a smaller portion of the pamphlet, 
from being " obviously only an introduction" to the second, that, 
whatever were the intentions of the writer, if the two be not 
allowed to be co-ordinate, the reader must, from the tenor of the 
writing, hold the second to be correlative to the first. For it is 
only on the ground of the first part — only on the supposition of 
the general argument being conclusive, that the second part, or 
special argument, is allowed by the pamphlet subordinately to 
emerge. The following are the words of transition from the one 
head to the other: " Supposing; then, that we wish to consider 
mathematics as an element of education, and as a means of form- 



OBSERVATIONS ON MR. WHEWELL'S LETTER. 317 

ing logical habits better than logic itself, it becomes an important 
question, how far this study, thus recommended, is justly charge- 
able with evil consequences, such as have been already mention- 
ed." Then follows the rest of the passage (p. 263) referred to by 
Mr. AVhewell and quoted in the Review ; where, however, there 
is not to be found a single word of a different tendency. 

(2) We must be allowed to observe, that we did not. That ex- 
pression was used by us in speaking of the whole work, and in 
speaking of it as yet known, only from the advertisement of its 
title. What is Mr. Whewell's notion of a treatise ? 

(3) If the first division of the pamphlet be not a " vindication 
of mathematical study as a principal mean in the cultivation of 
the reasoning faculty" (for that is our full expression), what is 
it? We said that it was too short; and that it took notice of 
none of the objections to the study in general, as disqualifying 
the mind for observation and common reasoning. We can not, 
therefore, justly be accused of allowing it to be supposed, far less 
of holding it out, to be other than what it actually is. How then 
can Mr. Whewell assert, as he afterward does, that we " attempted 
to gain a victory by representing a page or two of his ' Thoughts' 
as containing all that can be said by an able, earnest, official 
advocate?'''' But though the general argument was, as we stated, 
brief and only confirmatory, were we not warranted, on that very 
ground, in supposing that Mr. Whewell regarded it as of itself 
sufficiently strong — as of itself decisive? Because it is shown to 
be illogical, it does not cease to exist. 

(4) The expression quoted was, in its connection, manifestly 
only one of personal civility to Mr. Whewell. Of all meanings, as- 
suredly the one here put upon it is about the last which it could 
reasonably bear. We were too conscious of the unavoidable haste 
in which the article and its authorities were thrown together, 
with sole reference to Mr. Whewell's treatise, to dream of plum- 
ing ourselves on our preparation for attack. On this ground we 
must even found an excuse for one error at least, incurred in our 
too absolute assertion touching Bacon, in the text [now corrected] 
and relative note at p. 304. As to "truce" — -"pretext" — "ad- 
versary," we comprehend nothing. 

(5) The one general thesis which we maintained was : That 
the study of the mathematical sciences is, for reasons assigned, 
undeserving of special encouragement, as a mean of mental cul- 
tivation ; and, therefore, that the University of Cambridge, in so 



318 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS— NOTE. 

far as its system of education bestows not only a special, but a 
paramount, not to say an exclusive, encouragement on these 
sciences, violates every principle of academical policy. 1 

1 [Dr. Whewell on this says : — " The charge, that the University of Cambridge 
bestows not only a special but a paramount and exclusive encouragement on these 
(the mathematical) sciences is not only unfounded, but is inexcusably so, because it 
is impossible to refer to any record of the prizes which the University bestows, with- 
out seeing that there is a much greater number offered and given in other subjects 
than in Mathematics." (Mechanics, fifth edition, Preface, p. viii.) 

What I stated (though Dr. Whewell is pleased to call it "not only unfounded, but 
inexcusably so"), is literally correct. 

But Dr. Whewell, in the Jirst place, misrepresents my words. I did not say, "that 
the University of Cambridge bestows an exclusive encouragement on the mathematical 
sciences;" and what did I say, "that the University of Cambridge bestows not only 
a special but a paramount, not to say an exclusive, encouragement on these sciences" 
- — this is rigidly true. 

But in the second, place, Dr. Whewell himself asserts what, to use his own words, 
"is not only unfounded, but inexcusably so," inasmuch as he makes "the prizes 
which the University bestows," and their "number" the measure of academical en- 
couragement. This is wholly fallacious; and for these reasons: — 1°, The prizes, 
afford they what encouragement they may, are not founded, can not be withheld, and 
therefore are not, in propriety bestowed, by the University, that is by its dominant 
body, at all. They are the accidental bequests of individuals, in favor of certain favor- 
ite pursuits (it may be) of certain personal crotchets. 2°, Their number is insignifi- 
cant, and a large minority given to, or not without, mathematical eminence. 3°, Their 
pecuniary value is small, and, in this respect, the highest are the mathematical. 4°, 
The competition is principally for those mathematical, as to them the highest honor 
and the surest advantages are attached. 5°, But to these inadequate marks of dis- 
tinction, which the University really does not bestow, and for which, be it for good or 
ill, it is, in fact, not responsible, Dr. Whewell would not only himself limit, but would 
compel me to limit, the encouragement which Cambridge extends to the several 
branches of education. Marvelous to say ! he wholly overpasses the one encourage- 
ment, in comparison to which ail others fade out of view ; I mean the Tripos, that is, 
as he himself defines it, "the list of the names of those to whom the University assigns 
honorable distinction after a public trial," and this in the order of merit. 

It ''.ill not be denied that this is the standard, according to which in Cambridge 
(and be it spoken to the credit of the place), appointments in University and College 
are usually determined. The Tripos, and not the Prizes, is therefore the measure by 
which principally if not exclusively is to be gaged the amount of encouragement — the 
quantum of honor and advantage, bestowed in Cambridge on the several academical 
studies. This being premised, the following facts can not be denied. — 1°, That for 
near a century, to go no higher (from 1739 to 1824) there was no Tripos list, that is, 
no public honor, except for mathematical distinction. — 2°, That during that time, and 
down to 1830 (when " the Previous Examination" with its sorry minimum began), no 
qualification whatsoever, besides a certain mathematical competence, was requisite for 
a degree ; the University of Cambridge according its certificate of proficiency in the 
seven liberal arts to every illiterate barbarian who went up even for the lowest of its 
three classes of mathematical honors : and as such degree was a passport into holy 
orders, this " Venerable School" was allowed, for generations, to deluge the Church 
of Eng and with a clergy void even of one ascertained qualification for their sacred 
calling. So far, though all our British Universities are in various respects absurd, the 
University of Cambridge, in this absurdity, may rank supreme. — 3°, That when, in 
1824, the Classical Tripos commenced, though no classical proficiency was required 
from the competitor for mathematical honors, a mathematical honor was required as a 
preliminary from all who would compete for classical distinction. Thus, encourage- 
ment to classical study was only allowed as an additional stimulus to mathematical ; 



OBSERVATIONS ON MR. WHE WELL'S LETTER, ETC. 319 

(6) We objected not to the works in which mathematics are 
studied in Cambridge ; hut to the disproportioned encouragement 
which that university accords to the study of mathematics alto- 
gether ; and we argued for the restoration of philosophy proper, 
to its old and legitimate pre-eminence, and not for the introduc- 
tion of any particular books in which that philosophy may be 
best presented. This may form the subject of ulterior discussion. 
Rut we shall certainly not perplex the present question, by a 
compliance with Mr. "Whe well's misplaced request. 1 

and accordingly, if I had asserted, as I did not, that the University of Cambridge be- 
stowed an exclusive encouragement on the latter study, I should not perhaps have 
asserted more than what any one was warranted to do. (Of the recent changes in the 
academical system of Cambridge it would be here out of place to say any thing. But 
see Appendix, III.) — Whether then, is Dr. Whewell's statement or mine — •"not only 
unfounded, but inexcusably sol''] 

1 [Referring to this paragraph, Dr. Whewell (in his book on the Principles of En- 
glish University Education, p. 2) says : — " There is another controversy, to which some 
part of the following pages may appear to have reference ; — the question of the com- 
parative value of Mathematics, and of certain other studies which have been termed 
Philosophy, as instruments of education. An Edinburgh Reviewer, in a criticism upon 
a former publication of mine, maintained that the study of mathematics is, for such a 
purpose, useless or prejudicial ; and recommended the cultivation of ' philosophy' in 
its place. In a letter to the Editor of the Review (which I published), I expressed 
my willingness to discuss the subject at a future time ; and, referring to the mathema- 
tical course of this University, as my example of mathematical education, I requested 
to be informed, by description, or by reference to books, what that ' philosophy' was, 
which the Reviewer was prepared to contend for, as a better kind of education. I 
considered this as a proceeding, in the courtesy of literary combat, equivalent to send- 
ing my opponent the measure of my weapon, and begging to be furnished with the 
dimensions of his. When, therefore, the reviewer, in reply, flatly refused ' to perplex 
the question by a compliance with Mr. Whewell's misplaced request,' I certainly con- 
sidered myself as freed from any call to continue the controversy. No adherent of 
the reviewer could expect me to refute a proposition which the author himself did not 
venture to enunciate in an intelligible form. And, therefore, in the present book, I 
do not at all profess to discuss the question of the value of mathematics, and other 
kinds of philosophy, with reference to the reviewer's assertion, but simply so far as it 
is brought before me by the general course of my reflections." 

On this I must be permitted to observe, that Dr. Whewell represents me as saying 
what, in fact, is a reversal of my real expression. For I did not '' flatly refuse" to 
state what I thought were the particular books in which philosophy might be most 
profitably studied, I merely adjourned it to its proper season. "This," I said, "may 
form the subject of ulterior discussion." I did not, as Dr. Whewell quotes me, "refuse 
! to perplex the question,'''''' &c, but "to perplex the present question," &c. This is 
what I actually said. 

In this proceeding I was fully persuaded of its propriety. The question on which 
I had engaged was, the utility of mathematical study, in general, in any form, in any 
books, as a liberal exercise of mind ; and this question behoved to be disposed of, before 
entering on another — and another which only emerged, and that too subordinately, 
after the primary and principal problem had been decided. On this problem, I was 
firmly convinced that Dr. Whewell could allege nothing solid in favor of mathematical 
study, to the extent in which it is fostered or forced in Cambridge ; for to that extent, 
I knew that nothing solid ever had been, nor I believed ever could be, alleged in favor 
of mathematical study. Was I therefore to descend from this impregnable position. 



320 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS— NOTE. 

(7) Our objections and those of the authorities which we 
adduced, are directed against [the excessive study of] the mathe- 



whcre I stood secure, and of which I believed (the event has justified the anticipation), 
that Dr. Whewell was too prudent to attempt the assault! — Counter arguments, 
worthy of consideration, there are none ; and as to authorities of any cogency, there 
is only the authority of the University of Cambridge itself. And of what value in 
that ! It is not, in fact, the University of Cambridge, in propriety, which can be 
alleged as such authority: that is, the University organized by statute. It is 0?:ly a 
private and intrusive interest which has there superseded the public seminary, and this 
has calculated for the advantage of its members, and not for the national good, the 
education which Cambridge has long been permitted to dispense. This private interest 
is that, of the Colleges and of their Tutors ; and in Cambridge there has for genera- 
tions been taught, not what the ends of education, not what the ends of science, pre- 
scribe, but only what and how the College Tutors are capable of teaching. It would 
be here out of place (and is indeed done elsewhere) to explain how a mere tutorial 
instruction must be scanty and mechanical, and how the mechanism once made up, 
remains, and must remain, long after the opinions which it chances to comprehend 
and teach are elsewhere exploded. Suffice it for an example, that fifty, that sixty 
years after Newton had published his Principia. the physical hypotheses of Descartes 
were still tutorially inculcated in Newton's own University : in fact, I believe, that 
the Cambridge Colleges were about the. last seminaries throughout Europe in which 
the Newtonian doctrine superseded the Cartesian ; and this too in opposition to the 
Professorial authority of Newton himself, and his successors in the public chair. And 
why 1 Simply because in these colleges instruction was dispensed by tutors, for their 
own convenience and advantage ; and these tutors, educated in the older system, were 
unable or unwilling to re-educate themselves for teachers of the new. This is an ex- 
ample of the value of Collegia!, of Tutorial, authority in Cambridge; and we may be 
sure, that whatever are the subjects comprised in the tutorial mechanism of the time, 
will be. clamorously asserted by the collegial interest to be the best possible subjects 
of academical education ; while all beyond it, all especially that can not be reduced to 
a catechetical routine, will be as clamorously decried. Even the noble and invigor- 
ating study of ancient literature may be reduced to a comparatively barren and unim- 
proving exercise of the lower faculties alone. But on this matter I am happy to agree 
with Dr. Whewell; and nothing certainly can be more deserved than his censure of 
the Cambridge tutorial methods of classical reading and examination. 

But the notion of Dr. Whewell, that because the Cambridge text books on mathe- 
matics are "well known" (though, if I knew, I never once referred to any), therefore, 
that I was bound, and hoc statu, to specify the book or books on philosophy which I 
would recommend in their room ; — this notion is not merely preposterous. For — 

1°. In mathematics there is no difference of opinion about mathematical truth ; all 
mathematical books are all true ; and the only difference of better and worse, between 
one mathematical book and another is, that this presents the common truths under 
an easier form than that, exacting, therefore, from the student a les3 amount of intel- 
lectual effort. The best mathematical treatise thus constitutes, pro tanto, in itself, 
the worst instrument of education. For — 

2°. The highest end of education is not to dictate truths, but to stimulate exertion : 
since the mind is not invigorated, developed, in a word, educated, by the mere posses- 
sion of truths, but by the energy determined in their quest and contemplation. But — 

3°. This is better done by any work on philosophy which stimulates to strong and 
independent (be it even for the time erroneous) speculation, than by the best, work in 
mathematics which delivers truth but does not excite thought. Mathematical con- 
trasted with philosophical truths, are, indeed, comparatively uninteresting, compara- 
tively worthless ; but they are more certain. I admit, indeed, now, as I have done 
before : — "Mathematics, from the first, have been triumphant over the husk ; Philo- 
sophy is still militant for the kernel." But what is this to the question — Which study 
best cultivates the mind, ?] 



OBSERVATIONS ON MR. WHE WELL'S LETTER, ETC. 321 

matical sciences in general. Mathematics can be applied to 
objects of experience only in so far as these are measurable ; 
that is, in so far as they come, or are supposed to come, under 
the categories of extension and number. Applied mathematics 
are, therefore, equally limited and equally unimproving as pure. 
The sciences, indeed, with which mathematics are thus associated, 
may afford a more profitable exercise of mind ; but this is only 
in so far as they supply the matter of observation, and of probable 
reasoning, and therefore, before this matter is hypothetically sub- 
jected to mathematical demonstration or calculus. Were there 
in the physical sciences, as Mr. Whewell supposes, other grounds 
of necessary truth than the intuitions of Space and Time, the 
demonstrations deduced from these would be equally monotonous, 
equally easy, and equally unimproving, as the mathematical. 
But, that Mr. Whewell confounds empirical with pure knowledge, 
is shown by the very example which he adduces at p. 33 of his 
pamphlet. The solution of that requires nothing but experience 
and the logical analysis of thought. 1 

1 [Referring to this paragraph, Dr. Whewell (Preface to the fifth edition of his 
Mechanics, p. vi.) says: "Some persons appear to doubt whether there are, in the 
physical sciences, other grounds of necessary truth than the intuitions of space and 
time. We might demand of such persons whether the properties of the pressures 
which balance each other on the lever, as proved by Archimedes, be not necessary 
truths'! whether our conceptions of pressures, and the properties of pressures, are 
modifications of our conceptions of space and time"! and if they are not, whether nec- 
essary truths concerning pressures must not have some other ground than the Axioms 
of Geometry and Number 7 We might ask them whether we do not, in fact, in works 
like this, show that there are such other grounds, by actually enunciating them ? 
whether the Axiom, that the pressure on the fulcrum is equal to the sum of the 
weights, be not self-evident, and therefore necessary 1 

" If it be said, that the establishment of such propositions as this ' requires nothing 
but experience and the logical analysis of thought,' we can not help replying, that 
such a remark seems to betray confusion of thought and ignorance of the subject. 
For it would appear as if the author denied the character of necessary truth to such 
principles because they depend only on experience and analysis ; and that if, besides 
these, they depended upon some additional grounds, he would allow them to be neces- 
sary. Again, it is clear that, in fact, such propositions do not depend at all upon ex- 
perience ; for, as has elsewhere been urged — ' Who supposes that Archimedes thought 
it necessary to verify this result by actual trial 1 Or if he had done so, by what more 
evident principle could he have tested the equality of the weights V (Thoughts on the 
Study of Mathematics, &c. p. 33.) And if such propositions depend upon logical 
analysis only, how can they be otherwise than necessary 1 Does the objector hold 
that truths which resolve themselves into logical analysis, are empirical truths 1 

" I conceive, therefore, that the cultivation of such a subject as this may be of great 
use both to the Students of this University and to other persons, not only in familiar 
izing them with the character of necessary truths, and the processes of reasoning by 
which a system of such truths is built up ; but also by showing that such truths are 
not confined to the domain of space and number merely." 

Here the tables are completely turned. — I had objected to mathematical study — that, 
if too exclusively pursued, it tended to induce a habit of confused thinking ; but " con- 

X 



322 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS— NOTE. 

fusion of thought and ignorance of the suhject" are here objected to the objector. 
This stroke is bold, but dangerous. If not successful it is suicidal ; for it challenges 
retort, and should the missile from Dr. Whewell fall harmless, it may be returned with 
even fatal effect. 

Dr. Whewell, by position, is the first man in the first college, as by reputation, he 
is the ablest functionary, of Cambridge. In that mathematical university he stands 
the foremost mathematician ; but there, he likewise rises pre-eminent, out of mathe- 
matics, as a philosopher. Cambridge and mathematics could not, therefore, be more 
favorably represented. In these circumstances, if Dr. Whewell, accusing others, be 
himself, and from the very terms of his accusation, proved guilty of his own charge ; 
how virulent, how permanently deleterious, must be the effect of mathematical study, 
when a naturally vigorous intellect could not resist, when other and invigorating 
studies could not counteract, the mathematical alacrity to confusion of thought, even 
during the brief act of preferring that reproach itself, and with reference likewise to 
a favorite science 1 But so it is. For to establish the fact, it is unnecessary to look 
beyond the previous extract ; which, both in the ground of charge itself, and in the 
statements by which that charge is accompanied, supplies abundant evidence of con- 
fused and inadequate thinking. 

Dr. Whewell here, as in his " Thoughts on the Study of Mathematics," repeated- 
ly propounds it, as "a self-evident, and therefore necessary" proposition — as an 
" Axiom ;" that " the pressure on the fulcrum is equal to the sum of the weights." But 
to common sense and unconfused consciousness this proposition is nothing of the 
kind ; it is not self-evident, it is not necessary, it is not an axiom, for it is not true. 
The pressure on the fulcrum is equal to the sum of the weights, plus the weight of the 
lever ; in other words, it is equal to the weight of the system. Of course, no one 
knows this better than Dr. Whewell, but having ideally abstracted from the weight of 
the lever, he inadvertently advanced, in his popular pamphlet, without warning or ex- 
planation, a statement which, to popular apprehension, is manifestly false. There are 
other parts of this extract which I for one do not pretend to understand — without at 
least supplying what the author has omitted ; but let that pass. 

Having so indistinctly expressed himself, I can not wonder that Dr. Whewell has so 
completely misconceived me : supposing, as he does, that I could possibly hold pro- 
positions to be empirical, to be not necessary, in so far as these are applications of the 
canons of Logic. What I said, and clearly said, was this : — that the proposition in 
question (waving all inadequacy of expression) is no axiom, is no principle, because a 
derivative judgment, derived too from a double source; 1°, derived from the exercise 
of experience ; 2°, derived from the laws of thought. This was said, in saying, that 
Dr. Whewell's pretended axiom " requires nothing for its solution but experience and 
the logical analysis of thought." And that it is derived, and derived from these two 
sources, I now proceed to establish. 

1°. It is derived from experience. — Dr. Whewell asserts, "that such propositions 
do not depend at all upon experience." On the contrary, I maintain that all propo- 
sitions which involve the notion of gravitation, ivcight, pressure, presuppose experience ; 
for by experience alone do we become aware, that there is such a quale and quantum 
in the universe. To think it existent, there is no necessity of thought ; for we can 
easily in thought conceive the particles of matter, indifferent to each other, nay, en- 
dowed with a mutually repulsive, instead of a mutually attractive force. We can 
even, in thought, annihilate matter itself. So far the asserted axiom is merely a 
derived, and that too merely an empirical, proposition. — But, moreover, not only are 
we dependent on experience, for the fact of the existence of gravitation, &c., we are 
also indebted to observation for the further facts of the uniform and continuous opera- 
tion of that force ; and thus, in a second potence, are all such propositions dependent 
upon experience. — In sum : We can not think this and such like propositions, without 
founding doubly upon experience. — Dr. Whewell indeed observes, in addition to what 
has been extracted : — " If it be said, that we can not possess the ideas of pressure and 
mechanical action without the use of our senses, and that this is experience ; it is 
sufficient to reply, that the same may be said of the ideas of relations in space ; and 
that thus Geometry depends upon experience in this sense, no less than Mechanics." 



OBSERVATIONS ON MR. WHEWELL'S LETTER. ETC. 323 

(lb. p. viii.) — This is, however, only another instance, in him, of the " confusion of 
thought and ignorance of the subject," which he imputes to me. "The ideas of rela- 
tions in space," and "the ideas of pressure," &c, differ obtrusively in this: — that we 
can in thought easily annul pressure, all the properties of matter, and even matter 
itself; but are wholly unable to think away space and its relations. The latter are 
conditions, the former are cducts, of experience ; and it is this difference of their object- 
matters which constitutes Geometry a pure or a priori, and Mechanics, an empirical 
or a posteriori, science. (Dr. Whewell's errors, upon this and other kindred points, 
are refuted with great acuteness by the Rev. Mr. Mansel of St. John's, Oxford, in his 
valuable work just published, entitled — " Prolegomena Logica ; an Inquiry into the 
Psychological character of Logical Processes." See Note A and pp. 77, sq.) 
I now proceed to the second head of reduction. 

2°, It is derived from the logical analysis of thought. — Under this head my objection 
to Dr. Whewell's " Axiom" is, that it is merely a predication of a thing of itself, a 
mistaken commutation of the analytical principle of identity in logic' with a synthetical 
principle of some non-identity in mechanics. This pretended axiom is, in fact, nothing 
more than the tautological judgment, " that the whole is equal to all its parts ;" the 
confusion being occasioned and vailed by different words being employed to denote 
the same thing. These different words are weight and pressure. But weight and 
pressure are (here) only various terms for the same force. What weighs, pro tanto, 
is supposed to press ; what presses, pro tanto, is supposed to weigh. The pressure 
on the fulcrum — is thus only another phrase for — the iveight on the fulcrum ; and to 
say, with Dr. Whewell, that "the pressure on the fulcrum is equal to the sum of the 
weights," this (waving always the inaccuracy) is only tantamount to saying — either, 
that the pressure on the fulcrum is equal to the sum of the pressures on the lever — 
or, that the weight on the fulcrum is equal to the sum of the weights on the lever. 
It consequently requires, as I said, only a logical analysis of the enouncement that 
"the whole is equal to all its parts, therefore, to its two halves," &c., to obtain the 
idle proposition which Dr. Whewell has dignified by the name of — Axiom in Mechanics. 
Dr. Whewell's error from " confusion of thought," in this instance, is akin to a 
mistake which I have elsewhere found it necessary to expound (Dissertations on 
Reid, p. 853) ; — I mean his attempted " Demonstration" (from a supposed law of 
thought), "that all matter is heavy." 

But — I had almost forgotten — what shall we say of Archimedes'? " The Axiom''' 
is apparently fathered upon him ; he was a great mathematical inventor ; and it is 
maintained above (p. 283, sq.) that mathematical invention and philosophical genius 
(in which are necessarily comprehended distinct and perspicuous thinking) coincide. 
I was certain, before re-examining the treatise, on ./Equiponderants by Archimedes, 
that it could contain no such principle, no such truism ; nor does it. 

The reader is now in a condition to decide : — Whether the charge of " confusion 
of thought and ignorance of the subject" weigh on the accuser or on the accused ; arid, 
in general, Whether " Mathematics be a means of forming logical habits better than 
Logic itself" 

But before concluding, I am tempted to give one other specimen of " the conclusion 
of thought" in Dr. Whewell's reasoning, and of the manner in which (tdumque imbelle 
sine ictu) his " Mathematical Logic" is brought to bear against my arguments. — " I 
shall not pursue," says he, " the consideration of the beneficial intellectual influence 
of Mathematical studies. It would be easy to point out circumstances, which show 
that this influence has really operated ; — for instance, the extraordinary number of 
persons, who, after giving more than common attention to mathematical studies at the 
University, have afterward become eminent as English lawyers" (English Univer- 
sity Education, p. 14.) — The fact of the consecution I do not doubt. But if Dr. Whe- 
well had studied logic, as he has studied mathematics, he would not have confounded 
an antecedent with a cause, a consequent with an effect. There is a sophism against 
which logic, the discipline of unconfused thinking, puts us on our guard, and which 
is technically called the " Post hoc, ergo propter hoc." Of this fallacy Dr. Whewell 
is, in this his one selected instance, guilty. And how 1 English law has less of 
principle, and more of detail, than any other national jurisprudence. Its theory can 



324 STUDY OF MATHEMATICS— NOTE. 

be conquered, not by force of intellect alone ; and success in its practice requires, 
with a strong memory, a capacity of the most continuous, of the most irksome appli- 
cation. Now mathematical study requires this likewise ; it therefore tests, no doubt, 
to this extent, " the bottom" of the student. But because a great English Lawyer 
has been a Cambridge wrangler, it is a curious logic to maintain, that mathematical 
study conduces to legal proficiency. The Cambridge honor only shows, that a man 
has in him, by nature, one condition of a good English lawyer. And we might as 
well allege, in trying the blood of a terrier puppy, by holding him up from ear or paw, 
that the suspension itself was the cause of his proving " of the right, sort ;" as that 
mathematical study bestowed his power of dogged application, far less his power of 
legal logic, on the future counselor. For one man of genuine talent and accomplish- 
ment, who has sacrificed to the Molech of Cambridge idolatry, how many illiterate 
incapablesdo the lists of mathematical Wranglers exhibit? How many noble minds 
has a forced application to mathematical study reduced to idiocy or madness 1 How 
many generous victims (they " died and made no sign") have perished, and been for- 
gotten, in or after the pursuit of a mathematical Honor 1 This melancholy observation 
is familiarly made in Cambridge itself. 1 Again, do " Mathematics form logical habits 
better than Logic itself!" As the elegant Lagomarsini (''vir melioris Latinitatis 
peritissimus," to use the words of Ruhnkenius), in his oration on the Grammar Schools 
of Italy, said in reference to an English criticism : — " Hoc tantum dicam ; tunc me 
sequo animo de re latina prsecipientes, Italorumque in ea tractanda rationem reprehen- 
dentes, Britannos homines auditurum, quum aliquid vere latinum (quod jamdiu desi- 
deramus) ab se elaboratum ad nos ex illo Oceano suo miserint :" so for us, it will be 
time enough to listen to any Cambridge disparagement of non-mathematical logic, 
when a bit of reasoning has issued from that University, in praise of mathematical 
logic, not itself in violation of all logical law — for such, as yet, certainly, has not been 
vouchsafed. In fact, we need look no farther than the Cambridge panegyrics them- 
selves of mathematical study, to see how illogical are the habits which a too exclusive 
pursuit of that study fosters. — But in conclusion, Dr. Whewell also says : — "I have 
already noticed how well the training of the college appears to prepare men to become 
good lawyers. I will add, that I conceive our physicians to be the first in the world," 
&c. (lb. p. 51.) In so far as Cambridge is concerned, I should be glad if Dr. Whe- 
well had specified these paragons, who with merit so transcendent, hide their talent 
under a bushel ; for of their names, discoveries, and reputations, I profess myself 
wholly ignorant, and suspect that the world is not better informed, touching those 
who are its "first physicians." But this fact, is it not on a level with the previous 
reasoning?] 

1 With others, above, and especially the two testimonies from the Quarterly Review (pp. 309, 310), 
see the Cambridge pamphlet lately published by a " Member of the Senate," entitled "The Next 
Step" (p. 43). The author, likewise, refers to a pamphlet (which I have not seen) by Mr. Blakesley, 
for a corresponding statement. 



II.-ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL 
LEARNING. 

WITH RELATION TO THE DEFENSE OF CLASSICAL 
INSTRUCTION BY PROFESSOR PILLANS. 



(October, 1836.) 



Three Lectures on the Proper Objects and Methods of Education 
in reference to the different Orders of Society ; and on the 
relative Utility of Classical Instruction. Delivered in the 
University of Edinburgh, November, 1835. By James Pillans, 
M.A., F.R.S.E., Professor of Humanity in that University. 
8vo. Edinburgh: 1836. 

We regret that circumstances prevented our noticing these 
discourses in either of our last Numbers. They are a good word 
spoken in due season ; and sure we are, that it will not be spoken 
in vain, if our Scottish countrymen are not wholly disabled from 
appreciating at their real value, this vindication of classical stu- 
dies, and the objections by which they have been here recently 
assailed. It would, however, be a disparagement of these lectures 
to view them as only of temporary and local value ; far less, as 
merely an answer to what all entitled to an opinion on the matter 
must view as undeserving of refutation or notice — on its own 
account. They form, in fact, a valuable contribution to the phi- 
losophy of education ; and, in particular, one of the ablest expo- 
sitions we possess of the importance of philological studies in the 
higher cultivation of the mind. As an occasional publication, 
the answer does too much honor to the attack. Indeed, the only 
melancholy manifestation in the opposition now raised to the 
established course of classical instruction, is not the fact of such 
opposition ; but that arguments in themselves so futile — argu- 
ments which, in other countries, would have been treated only 



326 ' ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

with neglect, should in Scotland not have been wholly harmless. 
If such attacks have had their influence on the public mind, this 
affords only another proof, not that ancient literature is with us 
studied too much, but that it is studied far too little. Where 
classical learning has been vigorously cultivated, the most power- 
ful attacks have only ended in the purification and improvement 
of its study. In Germany and Holland, in Italy, and even in 
France, objections, not unreasonably, have been made to an 
exclusive and indiscriminate classical education; but the experi- 
mental changes they determined, have only shown in their result; 
that ancient literature may be more effectually cultivated in the 
school, if not cultivated alone ; and that while its study, if pro- 
perly directed, is, absolutely, the best mean toward an harmoni- 
ous development of the faculties — the one end of all liberal 
education ; yet, that this mean is not always, relatively, the best, 
when circumstances do not allow of its full and adequate appli- 
cation. 

It is natural that men should be inclined to soothe their vanity 
with the belief, that what they do not themselves know is not 
worth knowing ; and that they should find it easy to convert 
others, who are equally ignorant, to the same opinion, is what 
might, also confidently be presumed. " Ce n'est pas merveille, si 
ceux qui n'ont jamais mange de bonnes choses, ne scavent que 
c'est de bonnes viandes." On this principle, Scotland is the 
country of all others in which every disparagement of classical 
learning might be expected to be least unsuccessful. For it is 
the country where, from an accumulation of circumstances, the 
public mind has been long most feebly applied to the study of 
antiquity, and where it is daily more and more diverted to othei 
departments of knowledge. A summary indication of the more 
important of these circumstances may suffice to show, that the 
neglect of classical learning in Scotland is owing, neither to the 
inferior value of that learning in itself, nor to any want of capa- 
city in our countrymen for its cultivation. 

There are two principal conditions of the prosperity of classical 
studies in a country. The one — the necessity there imposed of a 
classical training for the three learned professions ; the other — 
the efficiency of its public schools and universities in the promo- 
tion of classical erudition. These two conditions, it is evident, 
severally, infer each other. For, on the one hand, where a cer- 
tain amount and quality of learning is requisite for the successful 



SCOTLAND DEFECTIVE IN CLASSICAL LEARNING. 32" 

cultivation of the Law, Medicine, and Divinity of a country, this 
of itself necessitates the existence of Schools and Universities 
competent to its supply ; and on the other, where an efficient 
system of classical education has hecome general, there the three 
professions naturally assume a more learned character, and 
demand a higher compliment of erudition from their members. 
The prosperity of ancient learning is every where found depend- 
ent on these conditions ; and these conditions are always found 
in harmony with each other. To explain the rise and decline 
of classical studies in different nations and periods, is therefore 
only to trace the circumstances which have in these modified the 
learned character of the professions, and the efficiency and appli- 
cation of the great public seminaries. 

It would be foolish to imagine that the study of antiquity can 
ever of itself secure an adequate cultivation. How pleasant and 
wholesome soever are its fruits, they can only be enjoyed by those 
who have already fed upon its bitter roots. The higher and more 
peculiar its ultimate advantages and pleasures- — the more it edu- 
cates to capacities of thought and feeling, which we should never 
otherwise have been taught to know or to exert — and the more 
that what it accomplishes can be accomplished by it alone — the 
less can those who have had no experience of its benefits, ever 
conceive, far less estimate their importance. Other studies of 
more immediate profit and attraction will divert from it the great 
mass of applicable talent. Without external encouragement to 
classical pursuits, there can be no classical public in a country, 
there can be no brotherhood of scholars to excite, to appreciate, 
to applaud, crvfj,(f)i\o\o<y6cv ical <rwev6ovcna%eiv. The extensive 
diffusion of learning in a nation is even a requisite of its intensive 
cultivation. Numbers are the condition of an active emulation; 
for without a rivalry of many vigorous competitors there is little 
honor in the contest, and the standard of excellence will be ever 
low. For a few holders of the plow there are many prickers 
of the oxen ; and a score of Barneses are required as the possibi- 
lity of a single Bentley. 

In accounting, therefore, for the low state of classical erudition 
in Scotland, we shall, in the first place, indicate the causes why 
in this country an inferior amount of ancient learning has been 
long found sufficient for its Law, Medicine, and Divinity ; and^ 
in the second, explain how our Scottish Schools and Universities 
are so ill adapted for the promotion of that learning. 



328 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING 

1. The Professions. — Law can be only viewed as conducive to 
the cause of classical erudition, in so far as (what in most coun- 
tries is the case) it renders necessary a knowledge of the Roman 
jurisprudence; the necessity of such a knowledge being, in fact, 
tantamount to a necessity for the cultivation of Latin history and 
literature. For while the Roman law affords the example of a 
completer and more self-connected system than the jurisprudence 
of any modern nation can exhibit ; without a minute and compre- 
hensive knowledge of that system in its relations and totality, its 
principles can neither be correctly understood, nor its conclusions 
with any certainty applied. This, however, is impossible without 
a philological knowledge of the language in which this law is 
written, and an historical knowledge of the circumstances under 
which it is gradually developed. On the other hand, an acquaint- 
ance with the Roman jurisprudence has been always viewed as 
indispensable for the illustration of Latin philology and antiqui- 
ties ; insomuch, that in most countries of Europe, ancient litera- 
ture and the Roman law have prospered or declined together ; 
the most successful cultivators of either department have indeed 
been almost uniformly cultivators of both. — In Italy, Roman law 
and ancient literature revived together ; and Alciatus was not 
vainer of his Latin poetry, than Politian of his interpretation of 
the Pandects. — In France, the critical study of the Roman juris- 
prudence was opened by Budaeus, who died the most accomplished 
Grecian of his age ; and in the following generation, Cujacius 
and Joseph Scaliger were only the leaders of an illustrious band, 
who combined, in almost equal proportions, law with literature, 
and literature with law. — To Holland the two studies migrated 
in company ; and the high and permanent prosperity of the Dutch 
schools of jurisprudence has been at once the effect and the cause 
of the long celebrity of the Dutch schools of classical philology. — 
In Germany, the great scholars and civilians, who illustrated the 
sixteenth century, disappeared together; and with a few partial 
exceptions, they were not replaced until the middle of the eigh- 
teenth, when the kindred studies began, and have continued to 
flourish in reciprocal luxuriance. — Classical literature and Roman 
law owe less to the jurists of England than to those of any other 
country. The English common law is derived from sources 
which it requires no classical erudition to elucidate ; in no other 
nation, except our own, has jurisprudence been less liberally cul- 
tivated as a general science — more exclusively as a special prac 



LAW, HOW CONDUCIVE TO CLASSICAL STUDY. 329 

tice ; and though of some recognized authority in certain English 
Courts, so little has the civil law been made an object of profes- 
sional study, that an English lawyer rarely hazards an allusion 
to the Imperial Collections, without betraying his ignorance of 
their very titles. Classical learning has, however, been always 
laudably cultivated in England, and English jurists have accord- 
ingly sometimes acquired, as scholars, a legal erudition, wholly 
superfluous in professional practice. [Tnis peculiarity of the En- 
glish jurisprudence is noticed and commented on by John Barclay 
in his Icon Animaruni.] ' 

In Scotland the causes are different, although the result is 
nearly the same. In this kingdom the Roman jurisprudence 
formerly possessed a high, but always an indefinite, authority. 
It exerted a conspicuous influence on the genius and original 
development of the Scottish law ; where not controlled by statute 
or custom, its determinations were usually admitted as decisive ; 
and some of the most eminent of our jurists have even recognized 
it as the written law of Scotland. It was usual also, until a com- 
paratively recent period, for those educated for the Scottish bar 
to study the Roman law under the illustrious civilians of France 
or Holland ; and they returned from the continental universities, 
if not always profound scholars, more aware, at least, of the value 
of classical learning, and with a higher standard of classical at- 
tainment. Still, however, the authority of the Civil Law in Scot- 
land was never strong enough to constrain the profession to its 
profound and universal study ; and the necessity of resorting to 
foreign seminaries for the requisite education, showed that this 
could not adequately be procured at home. Among the myriads 
of works illustrative of Roman jurisprudence, we recollect not 
even one that has appeared in Scotland; and the little that has 
been done in this department by Scotsmen was executed abroad, 
—the result of foreign training, stimulus, and example. The 
profession can lay no claim to what Cuningham proposed — to 
what Scrymger and Henry son performed. But the authority of 
the Roman jurisprudence, and the consequent necessity of its 
study, was destined gradually to decline. The Scottish law be- 
came more and more reduced to statute ; and after the union of 
the kingdoms was constrained to gravitate with an ever increas- 
ing velocity toward the indigenous and anti-Roman jurisprudence 
of England. The knowledge of the Roman system became always 
rarer and less profound. The judges, perhaps prudently, began 



330 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

to neglect an authority which was seldom adequately understood; 
and in Scottish practice a quotation from the Pandects now savors 
rather of ostentation than of use. 

■ Medicine was formerly a profession which required a large 
amount of classical erudition ; and among the most illustrious 
scholars since the revival of letters, no inconsiderable number 
have been physicians. The practical importance of this learning 
in Scottish medicine has, however, been long gradually falling. 
Hippocrates and Galen are not now the authorities. Medical 
works are no longer written and" read only in Latin ; nay, the 
late Dr. Gregory (the " Ultimus Romanorum") apologizes in his 
" Conspectus" for not abandoning a language which promised 
erelong to be unintelligible to his professional brethren. The 
future physician does not now resort to the classical schools of 
Leyden and Padua ; and in the universities of Scotland, the lan- 
guage of the learned has been dispensed with, not only in medical 
lectures, but in medical examination. [In the chief of these, 
literary qualification is indeed tested only by the professional 
teachers ; while the proportion of graduates has risen as the 
number of students has fallen off: so that a Scottish degree in 
medicine is now a valid guarantee of no higher classical accom- 
plishment, than the license from a Surgical College or certificate 
from Apothecaries' Hall. But was it for this, that the privilege 
is intrusted to a University of conferring the " Summi in Medi- 
cina Honores?"] 

Theology, however, far more than either Law or Medicine, 
affords an effectual support to classical studies ; for Christian, 
and more especially, Protestant theology is little else than an 
applied philology and criticism :•; of which the basis is a profound 
knowledge of the languages and history of the ancient world. 
To be a competent divine is, in fact, to be a scholar. 

Christianity is founded upon Miracles ; but these miracles are 
not continued, and the proof of their original occurrence is con- 
sequently left to human learning as a matter of historical evi- 
dence. — Again, Revelation, under either dispensation, was made 
through writers divinely authorized and inspired. But in some 
cases it is doubted, whether certain of these writers have been 
actually inspired ; and in others, whether the works purporting 
to have been written by them are actually theirs. This necessi- 
tates profound researches in regard to the authors of the several 
writings — to the time when — to the circumstances under which 



THEOLOGY, HOW CONDUCIVE TO CLASSICAL STUDY. 331 

— -to the place where — and to the persons for whom, they were 
first written. It behoves, to discover all that is known or not 
known touching the first publication of these writings— what is 
historically certain or probable as to their original recognition, 
and annexation to the general collection of inspired writings — 
and, in fine, all that is known of the fate, of the contradiction it 
encountered, and of the changes which this collection or Canon 
may have undergone. 

The vehicle of revelation is Writing ; and no miracle was 
vouchsafed to preserve the sacred documents from the fate of 
other ancient manuscripts, or to prevent the omissions, changes, 
and interpolations of careless or perfidious transcribers, through 
the period of fourteen centuries. This was left to the resources 
of human Criticism ; and the task requires for its accomplish- 
ment the profoundest scholarship. The collation of the most 
ancient manuscripts, the discrimination of their families, and a 
comparison of the oldest versions may afford certain valuable 
criteria ; but the one paramount and indispensable condition for 
the determination of the genuine reading, is a familiar acquaint- 
ance with the spirit of the languages in which the sacred volume 
is written. 

Interpretation, therefore, is not only the most extensive and 
arduous, but the most important function of the theologian; — 
that is, an inquiry into the sense of the inspired writings, and an 
exposition of the truths which they contain. To spftak only of 
the New Testament. Grod did not .select for his apostles the elo- 
quent and the learned. It is, therefore, necessary to evolve the 
sense from the phraseology of unlearned men, writing also in a 
language not their own. At the same time, the circumstances 
which determined the associations and course of thought, and 
consequently explain the meaning of the authors, are to be dis- 
covered only through a knowledge of the literature to which the 
writings belong — of the age in which they appeared — of the par- 
ticular public whom' they addressed — and of the circumstances 
under which they were produced. Add to this, that the original 
language, though Hellenistic Greek, is yet in a great part imme- 
diately, and in a still greater, mediately, translated from the 
Aramaic or Syro-Chaldsean ; and it is universally admitted by 
the learned, that without a knowledge of the various Semitic 
dialects, it is impossible to enter thoroughly into that peculiar 
character of thought and expression, which is necessary to be 



332 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

understood, to understand the real import of the vehicle in which 
revelation is conveyed. The interpretation of the sacred books 
thus supposes a profound and extensive knowledge of the lan- 
guages of antiquity, not merely in their words, but in their 
spirit ; and an intimate familiarity with the historical circum- 
stances of the period, which can only be acquired through a com- 
prehensive study of the contemporary authors. 

It is thus evident, on the one hand, that no country can possess 
a theology without also possessing a philological erudition ; and 
on the other, that if it possess a philological erudition, it possesses 
the one necessary condition of a theology. Now, for nearly two 
centuries, Scotland, compared with other countries, may be 
broadly said to have been vnthout a theology ; but as no other 
country has been more strongly actuated by religious interests, 
it can not be supposed that its clergy held in their hands the 
condition of a theology which (overlooking two qualified excep- 
tions) has been never realized by any. "What then are the 
peculiar circumstances which caused, or which allowed, the 
Scottish Church to remain so far behind all other national es- 
tablishments in theological, and, consequently, in classical erudi- 
tion ? 

In the first place, the Reformation in Scotland, and the consti- 
tution of the Scottish Church were not indigenous — were not the 
conclusions of a native theology. In Scotland the new opinions 
were a communication from abroad. The polity and principles 
of the Scottish Church were borrowed — borrowed from Calvin 
and Greneva ; and it was only one, and one of the least prominent, 
of the many Calvinist and Presbyterian Churches throughout 
Europe. At the same time, it was neither the creature nor the 
favorite of the Prince. The defense of that modification of Chris- 
tianity established in Scotland was thus no peculiar, no principal 
point of honor with the nation or the state ; and the Scottish 
clergy, geographically remote from the great centre of European 
polemic, were able, without manifest discredit, to devolve upon 
the kindred communions the vindication of their common polity 
and doctrine. — In this respect the English Church exhibits a 
striking contrast to the Scotch. The former stood alone among 
the Protestant communions. It was at once opposed to these and 
to the Church of Rome. It was the establishment of a great and 
prominent nation ; and the personal and political honor of the 
Monarch — the dispenser of its high distinctions and emoluments 



THEOLOGY, HOW CONDUCIVE TO CLASSICAL STUDY. 333 

— was long deeply interested in its credit and support. The 
Church of England was thus, from its origin, in a relation of hos- 
tility to every other. Polemical it must he ; and in the general 
warfare which it waged, as it possessed the means, so it had 
every motive to reward, in its champions, the higher qualities of 
theological prowess. If the Church of England could dispense 
with a learned clergy, it could not dispense with a complement 
of learned divines. 

In the second place, the determination given to the Church of 
Scotland by those through whom it was established was not one 
of erudition. 

In Germany the Reformation proceeded from, and was princi- 
pally carried through by, the academical divines; the princes, 
the cities, and the people only obeyed the impulsion first given 
and subsequently continued from the universities. In its origin 
the religious revolution was, in the empire, a learned revolution; 
and every permanent modification, every important movement in 
its progress had some learned theologian for its author. From 
this character of the Reformation in Germany, the determination 
of religious dogmas was there naturally viewed as a privilege of 
erudition — as more the function of the universities than of the 
church, the people, or the state. Religion consequently remained 
in the Gferman schools a matter peculiarly proposed for learned 
investigation ; the authority of confessions was not long allowed 
to suspend the Protestant right of inquiry ; and the alarming 
freedom with which this right has been latterly exercised by the 
Lutheran divines, may be traced back to the license and example 
of Luther himself. In Germany, indeed, theology necessarily 
shared the fate of classical learning. The causes which, from 
the conclusion of the sixteenth century, depressed the latter, 
reduced the former to a shallow and barbarous polemic ; and the 
revival of the study of antiquity, from the middle of the eight- 
eenth, was principally the condition, and partly the consequence, 
of a revival of theological learning. 

In England the peculiar form under which the Reformation 
was established was principally determined by the royal will. 
But the very fact that the Church of England was neither in its 
origin the free creation of a learned theology, nor the spontaneous 
choice of a persuaded people, only enhanced the necessity of a 
higher erudition to illustrate and to defend it when established. 
Besides standing, in Europe, opposed to every other establish- 



334 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

merit and communion, it was, in its own country, surrounded by 
a more powerful host of sectaries than any other national church ; 
— who, originally hostile to its polity and privileges, became, on 
its conversion from Calvinism, by Laud, the more deadly enemies 
of its doctrine. The difficulty and increasing danger of this 
position kept up an unceasing necessity for able and erudite 
defenders ; and as honors and riches were not stinted as the 
price, the supply of the commodity was hardly inferior to the 
demand. 

The Church of Scotland, on the contrary, was neither the off- 
spring of learning nor of power ; it was the choice of an unlearn- 
ed people, and after being long upheld by the nation in defiance 
of every effort of the government, it was finally established by a 
revolution. 

As the Scottish Reformation did not originate in native learn- 
ing, so it did not even come recommended to the Scottish people, 
by the learned authority of its propagators. In relation to other 
national Reformers, the Reformer of Scotland was an unlettered 
man. " Compared with Knox," says a great German historian, 
" Luther was but a timorous boy ;" but if Knox surpassed Luther 
himself in intrepidity, even Luther was a learned theologian by 
the side of Knox. With the exception of Melville, who obtained 
what erudition he possessed abroad, the religion of the people of 
Scotland could boast of no theologian worthy of the name. Some 
remarkable divines indeed Scotland has possessed ; but these were 
all adherents of that church, which for a season was established 
by the will of the monarch in opposition to the wishes of the 
nation. The two Forbeses, to say nothing of Leighton, Burnet, 
and Sage, were Episcopalians. In fact the want of popular sup- 
port made it necessary for the divines of that establishment to 
compensate by the strength of their theological learning for the 
weakness of their political position. The struggle which ensued 
between -the Episcopal and Presbyterian parties was, from first to 
last, more a popular than a scientific — more a civil than a theo- 
logical contest ; and the Covenanters, whose zeal 'and fortitude 
finally wrought out the establishment of the religion and liberty 
of the nation, were unlearned as they were enthusiastic. With 
the triumph of the Presbyterian polity and doctrines, the contro- 
versy between the rival persuasions ceased. The Scottish Epis- 
copalians were few in numbers, and long politically repressed ; 
and the other separatists from the establishment, so far from being, 



THEOLOGY, HOW CONDUCIVE TO CLASSICAL STUDY. 335 

as in England, the enemies of the dominant church, were in reality 
its useful friends. They pitched in general somewhat higher the 
principles which they held in common with the establishment ; 
and whereas in England the Dissenters would have radically 
destroyed what they condemned as vicious, in Scotland they 
wished only, as they in fact contributed, to brace what they 
viewed as relaxed. Thus, in Scotland, if sectarian controversy 
did not wholly cease, theological erudition was not required for 
its persecution. The learning of the Dissenters did not put to 
shame the ignorance of the Establishment; and the people were so 
well satisfied with their own triumph, and their adopted church, 
that its clergy had no call on them for erudition to illustrate what 
was already respected, or to vindicate what was not assailed. 1 
Even the attacks on Christianity which were subsequently made 
in Scotland, and which it was therefore more immediately incum- 
bent on the Scottish clergy to repel, were not such as it required any 
theological erudition to meet ; while, from the religious disposi- 
tions of the public, these attacks remained always rather a scandal 
than a danger. At the same time, in no other country was there 
so little verge, far less encouragement, allowed to theological 
speculation. The standards of Scottish orthodoxy were more ar- 
ticulate and unambiguous than those of any other church; and 
to its members the permissible result of all inquiry was in, propor- 
tion rigorously predetermined. Though often ignorantly mistaken, 
often intentionally misunderstood, the national creed could not, 
as in other countries, by any section of the established clergy, be' 
either professedly abandoned or openly attacked. In religious 
controversy, popular opinion remained always the supreme tribu- 
nal ; and a clamor, when this could be excited, was at once decis- 
ive of victory. At the same time the highest aim of clerical 
accomplishment was to preach a popular discourse. Under the 
former system of church patronage, this was always a principal 
condition of success ; under the present, it promises to be soon 

1 [When yet comparatively learned — before its secure establishment, and the conse- 
quent slumber into which it was allowed to sink, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, 
sensible of its deficiencies, sought more especially from Holland, for theologians and 
scholars who might raise the fallen and falling standard of its aspirants to the ministry. 
This consciousness of self-deficiency is an honorable testimony to the older Church. 
Of these movements, I am aware of two, and of these I write merely from recollection. 
The one will be found in the records of an Assembly, during what has been here called 
" the Second Reformation ;" the other is recorded by Calamy, in the memoirs of his 
own life, who mentions, that when a student in Holland he there mot Cars! airs, on a 
mission into that country to recruit for persons qualified to fill the chairs in the several 
Universities of Scotland. How this effort unfortunately failed, I am unable to state.] 



336 m THE I'oXDlTIONS of classical learning. 

the only one. 1 Theological learning remained thus superfluous, 
if not unsafe. 

Nor, in the third place, must it be overlooked, that the laud- 
able accommodation of the Scottish Church to its essential end. — 
the religious instruction of the people — secured it consideration 
and usefulness without any high attainment in theological science. 
•This, indeed, it neither felt as necessary, nor possessed the means 
of encouraging. Ecclesiastical property was fairly applied to 
ecclesiastical purposes ; and the duties and salaries of the clergy 
were neither inadequately nor unequally apportioned. If the pro- 
fessional education of the churchman was defective, still it was 
better than none. If not learned, he was rarely incompetent to 
parochial duties, which he could not neglect ; while his religious 
and moral character were respectable and respected. The people 
of Scotland were justly contented with their Church. 

In the Church of England, on the contrary, the splendor of 
extraordinary learning was requisite to throw into the shade its 
manifold defects and abuses ; — its want of professional education 
— its pluralities — its sinecures — its non-residence — its princely 
pampering of the few — its beggarly starvation of the many. The 
grosser the ignorance which it tolerated, the more distinguished 
must be the erudition which.it encouraged ; and in the distribu- 
tion of its higher honors, the promotion of merit, in some cases, 
was even necessary to redeem the privilege of neglecting it in 
general. Thus the different circumstances of the two churches 
rendered the clergy of the one, neither ignorant nor learned ; of 
the other, ignorant and learned at once. 

The circumstance, however, of most decisive influence on the 
erudition of a clergy is the quality and amount of the preparatory 
and professional education they receive. As almost exclusively 
bred in the common schools and universities of a country, and 
their necessary course of education being in general considerably 



1 [This was written soon after the passing of what is called the Veto Act by the 
General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, which declared, as ancient and indefeasi- 
ble, the right of the people to refuse, without reasons, any pastor presented to them ; 
and before this act had been pronounced, by the competent tribunals, illegal. Had the 
measure gone to compel an adequate education and trial of the clergy — had it provided 
that none should assume the character of pastor who was not fully competent to pas- 
toral duties — and that each parish should obtain, among qualified candidates, the min- 
ister best suited to its reasonable wants; — had it, in fact, abolished private patronage 
— and declared as imperative, all that the national Church, in this, or any other Prot- 
estant state, had ever even sought to confer upon the people : in that case I, for one, 
should have wished it all success. But — .] 



SCOTTISH SEMINARIES, CLASSICALLY INCOMPETENT. 337 

longer than that of the other learned professions, the clergy con- 
sequently express more fully and fairly than any other class the- 
excellences and defects of the native seminaries. On the other 
hand, the quality and amount of their learning principally determ- 
ine for good or evil the character of the whole education, public 
and private, of a country ; for the clergy, or those trained for the 
church, constitute not only the most numerous body of literary 
men, but the class from which tutors, schoolmasters, and even 
professors, are principally taken. Their ignorance or erudition 
thus reacts most powerfully and extensively, either to raise and 
keep up learning, or to prevent its rising among all orders and 
professions. The standard of learning' in a national clergy is, 
in fact, the standard of learning- in a nation. 

This leads us to the second general condition of classical erudi- 
tion. 

II. The system of Schools and Universities. — And in Scotland 
our higher and lower seminaries are, perhaps, worse calculated 
for the promotion of ancient learning than those of any other 
European country. 

No other country is so defective in the very foundation of a 
classical instruction — the number and quality of Grammar Schools. 
England has its five hundred of these, publicly endowed : how 
many has Scotland ! The attempt to supply this want by making 
the parochial schoolmaster teach the elements of Latin — Greek 
is out of the question — proclaims but does not remedy the defi- 
ciency. If sometimes hardly competent to the work of primary 
education, this functionary is rarely qualified for a classical in- 
structor. Yet to his incompetency has, in general, been aban- 
doned the preparation of the future clergy and schoolmasters of 
the nation. It is, indeed, only of later years that a few grammar 
schools have ventured upon Grreek ; the alphabet of which is, bi 
country students at least, still usually acquired in the university. 
The universities were, indeed, obliged, changing their proper 
character, to stoop, in order to supply the absence or the income 
petency of the inferior seminaries. To do this adequately was,, in 
the circumstances, impossible. Professorial prelections are no 
substitute for scholastic discipline. 1 Prematurely matriculated* 

1 [It is part and parcel of its general defect in scholarship, that the want of grammar 
or classical schools throughout the country has never, for some two centuries, been 
felt by our Church. A tythe of the agitation fruitlessly expended on some mistaken 
object, would have succeeded in forcing the state to remedy this opprobrium, which 
has so long and so heavily weighed on the clergy and people of Scotland.] 

Y 



333 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

the student often completed his academical course of philology, 
before boys in other countries had finished school ; and, in his 
progress through the superior classes, he soon forgot the scantling 
of the languages which he had now no longer any occasion to 
employ. Even in the long course of academical instruction, to 
which the future churchman was astricted, a few trifling exercises 
of form are all, we believe, that render some knowledge of Latin 
a convenient accomplishment. — What, in fine, is the character 
of his professional examination ? It is peculiar to Scotland, that 
the candidate for holy orders is tried, not by one or a few respons- 
ible individuals, specially nominated for that purpose from superior 
erudition and ability; but left to the low standard and fortuitous 
examination of all or any members of the Presbytery (clergy of a 
district) to which we may apply. This perhaps is worse even 
than the examination by a Bishop's Chaplain ; but the English 
and Scottish Churches have, between them, the worst tests of 
clerical competency in Christendom. 

Nor even indirectly was there encouragement of any kind pre- 
sented by the universities for proficiency in classical attainments. 
The Degree in Arts, as it conferred no honor, was no object of 
ambition ; and when not an empty compliment, a minimum of 
the learned languages sufficed for the examination. 1 

Of old, the Scottish educational system was a more effectual 
mean of classical instruction than it proves at present ; but that 
it was never adequate to this end is proved by two facts, to which 
on a former occasion, [Ed. No. iii.] we have alluded. — The first: 
— that although a trifling proportion of the educated ranks could 
have received their instruction and literary impulses abroad ; yet 
of Scottish scholars, all of the highest celebrity, and far more than 
nine-tenths of those, worthy of the name at all, have been either 
educated in foreign seminaries, or their tastes and studies determ- 

1 [In Edinburgh, a greater amount of knowledge is ostensibly required for this de- 
gree than in any other University ; but no other University can accept less, no other, 
I believe, accepts so little. The fundamental principle of academical graduation, not 
to ask more than must be given, is here, not only violated, but reversed. Had there 
been any prospect of a reform from without, I should long ago have proclaimed the 
evils to be amended ; and having no hope of a reform from within, it is now (T deem 
it proper publicly to state) many years since I overtly withdrew from every responsi- 
bility in the discharge of this, as of all other trusts, reposed in the Senatus Academi- 
eu6. — One very simple remedy for, at least, the most disgraceful part of the decrees 
in Medicine and in Arts, would be to make it necessary for the candidate to pass, for 
a preliminary minimum, an examination by some extra academical and disinterested 
board, taken, say, from the Masters of the High School or Edinburgh Academy, either 
or both.] 



SCOTTISH SEMINARIES, CLASSICALLY INCOMPETENT. 339 

ined in the society of foreign learned men. — The second : — that 
although in other countries the clergy take, as a class, the high- 
est place in the higher regions of erudition ; yet in Scotland, from 
their dependence on the native seminaries for education, they 
have remained comparatively inferior in classical learning; almost 
every scholar of distinguished note having, for nearly two centu- 
ries, been found among the laity. 

For those able to supply their development, the preceding hints 
may suffice, to explain the causes of the low state of classical 
learning in Scotland. In fact, were it not for the neighborhood 
and ascendency of England, and that a considerable proportion of 
those who give a bias to public opinion receive their education and 
literary convictions out of Scotland, we are almost disposed to be- 
lieve that in this country, Greek and Latin would long ere now 
have been studied, as we study Hebrew or Sanscrit. As it is, 
these influences are only decisive in the capital ; and even here 
the opinion of the more intelligent in favor of the primary import- 
ance of classical education is encountered by a numerous opposi- 
tion. It is, indeed, fortunate for Edinburgh, that its classical in- 
stitutions have been powerfully upheld by the reputation and 
talents of their teachers ; but all that individual men — all that 
individual seminaries — all that partial and precarious influences 
can effect, are insufficient to turn back that tide of circumstances, 
which threatens, unless some public effort may arrest it, to whelm 
in one flood of barbarism, all that is most conducive to our intel- 
lectual and moral well-being—all that is not subsidiary to vulgar 
interests, and to the comforts of an animal existence. 

The public is now awakening to the necessity of a better edu- 
cation for the people ; our self-satisfied contentment with the 
sufficiency of our parish schools, is already dissipated even in 
Scotland ; and the state can not long withhold from the British 
nation what is already enjoyed by the other countries of Europe. 
But it is the duty of a government, not only to provide for the 
necessary instruction of the people, but also to promote the liberal 
education of the higher orders ; and in particular, to secure a 
competent erudition in the church, and the other privileged pro- 
fessions. In Scotland, how defective soever be the system of 
popular schools, this may be viewed as complete and perfect, com- 
pared with the system of grammar schools. Until a sufficient 
number of these be established over Scotland, and brought within 
the reach of those destined for an academical career, it is impossi- 



340 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

l)le that tho universities can perform their proper function in the 
cultivation of learning; or that the professions, and the clergy in 
particular, should be insured in that amount and quality oi clas- 
sical knowledge which is requisite to place them on a level with 
their brethren in other countries. Nor until the patronage and 
regulation of our universities be deposited in more enlightened 
and disinterested hands, can we hope that solid learning will re- 
ceive the preference and encouragement which a university should 
afford ; if academical, if liberal study is to be something, higher 
than a mere popular cultivation of the amusing, of the palpable, 
of the vulgarly useful. Amid all the corruptions of Oxford, that 
university has maintained (from accidental circumstances, in- 
deed), this fundamental principle ; and it is the maintenance of 
this principle, however, imperfectly applied, that was mainly the 
ground of our conviction, that if the legislature do its duty, Ox- 
ford is the university susceptible of the easiest and most effectual 
regeneration. 1 [Ed. No. iv.] 



These observations have detained us too long from our author ; 
and the length to which they have extended precludes us from 
offering, as we meant, some contributions of our own in connec- 
tion with the argument which he so ably and conclusively main- 
tains. 

Professor Pillans opens the first Lecture with a rapid survey 
of national education in ancient and in modern times ; and he 
justly attributes to the states of the Grermanic Union the glory of 
having first practically realized it as a great principle of political 
morality — that every government is bound to provide and to in- 
sure the moral training and intellectual instruction of the whole, 
body of its subjects. He shows the humiliating contrast in which 
Britain stands in this respect to the states of Germany ; vindicates: 

1 We have said nothing of the effect of endowments specially destined for the en- 
couragement of learning, by enabling the beneficiary to devote himself, without dis- 
traction, to the pursuits of erudition. There can be no doubt that such a mean, if 
properly applied, might be of important service. But where they do actually exist — 
a» in England — these endowments have seldom been found wisely administered, and 
their effect, upon the whole, has been injurious rather than beneficial. In point of 
fact, the countries of Europe where learning in general, and classical learning in par- 
ticular, has been most successfully cultivated, as Holland and Protestant Germany, 
possess no advantages of the kind ; and are only superior to Scotland in a completer 
organization of schools, and a tolerable system of university patronage. — [See the wext 
fallowing article.] 



AUTHOR'S LECTURES. 34) 

their enforcement of education by law ; and accords a well-merited 
encomium to the enlightened magnanimity of France in profiting 
by the experience, and in adopting the institutions of Prussia. 
Alter some valuable observations on the methods and principles 
of popular instruction, he signalizes the difference, in end and 
means, between the education of "the lower and the education of 
the higher classes of society. . . . 

In the second Lecture, after exposing that most contemptible 
of all delusions, that the mere possession of facts — the simple 
swallowing of truths — is the end proposed by education, and show- 
ing that it is not by the amount of knowledge communicated, 
but by the amount of thought which such knowledge calls into 
activity, that the mind is exercised and developed, our author 
proceeds to contrast the advantages in this respect of mathemat- 
ical and classical instruction. We are gratified to find that our 
own conclusions in regard to the minor value of mathematical 
study as a mean of mental cultivation are not opposed to those 
of so high an authority in practical education ; and that our con- 
victions, both of the paramount utility, in this relation, of classi- 
cal study, and of the errors by which, in practice, this utility is- 
too often compromised, are in all respects the same with those of 
so philosophical a scholar. We must pass over his strictures on 
the great schools of England, in order to quote his unfavorable 
opinion of the organization of our Edinburgh classical schools-; 
an organization now peculiar, we believe, to Scotland, and which 
we have long been convinced is almost the only impediment that 
prevents the distinguished Zeal and ability of their teachers from 
carrying these seminaries to their attainable perfection. On the 
present plan, a new class commences every year under a separate 
master ; and the boys, however numerous, and however different 
in capacity, remain during four years — i.e. — until they enter 
under the Rector — the exclusive pupils of the same classical in- 
structor, whose emoluments are in proportion to the number of 
his peculiar scholars 

On the manifold disadvantages of this arrangement much might 
be said ; — and we could quote a host of authorities in favor of 
the scheme of promotion and retardation, as determined by solemn 
terminal examinations ; — a scheme for centuries established in 
Holland, Germany, and other continental countries. Buchanan, 
in his plan of a classical school, in his " Opinion anent the Refor- 
mation of the Universitie of St. Androis," orders " that the 



342 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

classes shall be visit every quarter of a year, and promovit aftir 
ther merits." 1 In most countries this act takes place at half- 
yearly intervals. 

In his third and last Lecture our author is occupied with his 
principal subject, the vindication of classical studies from the 
charge of inutility — an easy matter ; and the far more difficult 
task of illustrating the various and peculiar modes in which these 
studies exercise and improve the mind. We regret that we are 
unable to afford our readers more than a sample of his admirable 
observations. After a copious enumeration of the general advan- 
tages to be reaped from the study of the ancient authors, he pro- 
ceeds : 

" But, again, it may be argued, Why might not all this be done, and 
done more compendiously and expeditiously, by taking the works of our 
own English authors for the substratum of this intellectual and moral 
training? My answer is, that, with such means, it could not, I think, 
be done at all." 

" It is, indeed, a great and just boast of these languages (which have 
been called, from the circumstance, transpositive), that this liberty of ar- 
rangement enables the speaker or writer to dispose his thoughts to the 
best advantage, and to place in most prominent relief those which he 
wishes to be peculiarly impressive; and that thus they are pre-eminently 
fitted for the purposes of eloquence and poetry. It is owing to the same 
peculiarities in the structure of the ancient languages, that the writers in 
them were enabled to construct those long and curiously involved sen- 
tences, Avhich any attempt to translate literally serves only to perplex 
and obscure ; but which presented to the ancient reader, as they do to 
the modern imbued with his taste and perceptions, a beautiful, and, in 
■spite of its complexity, a sweetly harmonizing system of thoughts. I have 
already alluded to the exertion of mind required to perceive all the bear- 
ings of such a sentence, as to an exercise well fitted for sharpening the 
faculties ; and this view of the ancient tongues — considered as instru- 
ments of thought widely differing from, and in most respects superior to, 
our own — is one which recommends them to be used also as instruments 
of education. 

" Again, our mother tongue is so entwined and identified -with our 

1 Professor Pillans will also be pleased to find, from the same Opinion, which is, 
we believe, very little known, that his favorite "Monitorial System" was carried into 
effect by Buchanan. It has not been noticed that in this plan of studies Buchanan 
was greatly indebted to his friend Sturmius ; and that great pedagogue is also a high 
authority in favor of the plan of instruction of the younger by older pupils. It had 
also previously been reduced to practice by Trotzendorf. For centuries, it has been 
prudently applied in Schulpforte, the prime classical school of Europe. The compul- 
sory lecturing — the necessary regency — of graduates or inccptors in the ancient uni- 
versities mainly proceeded on the profound principle, Doce ut Discas. As the scho- 
lastic brocard runs : 

" Discerc si quarts, doccas, sic ipse doceris ; 
Nam studio tali tibi proficis atque sodali." 



AUTHOR'S LECTURES. 343 

early and ordinary habits of thinking and speaking, it forms so much a 
part, of ourselves from, the nursery upward, that it is extremely difficult 
to place it, so to speak, at a sufficient distance from the mind's eye to 
discern its nature, or to judge of its proportions. It is, besides, so uneom- 
pounded in its structure — so patch-work-like in its composition, so broken 
down into particles, so scanty in its inflections, and so simple in its fun- 
damental rules of construction, that it is next to impossible to have a true 
grammatical notion of it, or to form indeed any correct ideas of grammar 
and philology at all, without being able to compare and contrast it with 
another language, and that other of a character essentially different." 

Nothing has more contributed in this country to disparage the 
cause of classical education than the rendering it the education 
of all. That to many this education can be of little or no advant- 
age, is a truth too manifest to be denied ; and on this admission 
the sophism is natural, to convert "useless to many" into "useful 
to none." "With us, the learned languages are at once taught too 
extensively, and not intensively enough ; an absurdity in which 
we are now left almost alone in Europe. We may notice that 
the distinction of schools, to which, in the following passage, Mr. 
Pillans alludes, is not peculiar to Prussia, but has been long uni- 
versal in the German and Scandinavian states : even Russia has 
adopted it. 

" The strongest case against the advocates for classical education, is 
the practice that has hitherto prevailed of making it so general as to in- 
clude boys of whom it is known beforehand that they are to engage in the 
ordinary pursuits of trade and commerce ; who are not intended to pros- 
ecute their education farther than school, and are not therefore likely to 
follow out the subject of their previous studies much, or at all, beyond the 
period of their attendance there. 

" I willingly allow, and have already admitted, that a youth who looks 
forward from the very outset to the practice of some mechanical or even 
purely scientific art, may employ his time better, in acquiring manual 
dexterity and mathematical knowledge, than in making himself imper- 
fectly acquainted with a dead language. There must be in all very large 
and populous towns, a class of persons in tolerably easy circumstances, 
and whose daily business affords them considerable leisure, but who con- 
template for their children nothing beyond such acquirements as shall 
enable them to follow out the gainful occupation, and move in the narrow 
circle, in which they themselves, and their fathers before them, have 
spent a quiet and inoffensive life. It was for youth of this sort that the 
Prussian government, with a sagacity and foresight characteristic of all 
its educational proceedings, provided what are called buerger and mittel- 
sclmlen — intermediate steps between the volks-schulen, and primary 
schools, and the Gymnasia, or gelehrte-schulen ; and the French have 
wisely followed the example of Prussia, by ordaining the establishment 
of ecoles moyennes, called also icoles primaires superieures, in all towns 
above a certain population." 



344 ON THE CONDITIONS OF CLASSICAL LEARNING. 

From the specimens now adduced, the reader is enabled to 
Form certainly a high, but by no means an adequate estimate of 
these lectures. To be properly appreciated, the whole reasoning 
must be studied in connection — which, we are confident, few, 
sincerely interested in the subject, will fail to do. 



-Or 



III.-ON THE PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE 
OF UNIVERSITIES. 1 



(April, 1834.) 



Report made to His Majesty, by a Royal Commission of Inquiry 
into the State of the Universities of Scotland. (Ordered by 
the House of Commons to be printed, 7th October, 1831.) 

We have long had it in view to consider this Report, both with 
respect to what it contains, and to what it omits. At present we 
must limit ourselves to the latter head ; and in particular shall 
endeavor to make up for its remarkable silence as to the systems 
of Academical Patronage in this country, their palpable defects, 
and the means of improvement. This, and the revision and for- 
mation of constitutions, were the only objects upon which its 
framers could have employed themselves beneficially ; for it is of 
far more importance to secure good Teachers, than to make rules 
about Teaching ; and it shall be our present endeavor to show in 
what way this primary end must be attained in principle, how 
it has been attained in other countries, and might be rendered 
attainable in our own. On a future occasion, we may perhaps 
make some observations on the more censurable parts of the 
TLeport with respect to Teaching and Academical Policy ; mean- 
while, we shall touch principally on the one capital omission now 
commemorated. 

This omission, however singular it may appear, is not without 
excuse. During the ascendency of those principles of govern- 
ment under which the Commission was constituted, to have 
deprived public trustees of their office only for incompetence 
and self-seeking, would have been felt a far-reaching and a very 

1 [Omitted, some interpolations of little moment.] 



346 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

dangerous precedent ; and so long as the Great Corporation 
remained the pattern and the patron of corruption, to have at- 
tempted a reform of minor corporations would have been at once 
preposterous and unavailing. At the same time the theory of 
educational establishments is so little understood in this country, 
and so total an ignorance prevails in regard to what has been 
practically accomplished in foreign Universities, past and present, 
that the Commissioners are hardly to be blamed for any limited 
and erroneous views of the imperfections of our academical sys- 
tem, or of the measures to be adopted for its improvement. To 
the same cause is it to be attributed, that while all admit, in 
proportion to their intelligence, the defective patronage of our 
Universities, there are few who do not resign themselves to a 
comfortless despair of the possibility of any important melioration. 
Yet, this despair is itself the principal — indeed, the only obstacle 
to such a result. And to show that it is totally unfounded, that, 
in theory, the principles which regulate the right organization of 
academical patronage are few, simple, and self-evident, and that 
in practice, these have always proved successful, even when very 
rudely applied, is the purpose of the following observations. 
They pretend only to attract public attention to the subject ; and 
fully convinced of the truth and expediency of our views, we re- 
gret that the exposition we can now afford them, is so inadequate 
to their paramount importance. 

Universities are establishments founded and privileged by the 
State for public purposes : they accomplish these purposes through 
their Professors ; ' and the right of choosing professors is a pub- 
lic Trust confided to an individual or body of men, solely to the 
end, that the persons best qualified for its duties, may be most 
certainly procured for the vacant chair. — Let us explicate this 
definition of academical patronage in detail. 

I. In the first place, in regard to the nature of academical pat- 
ronage : 2 — That it is a trust conferred by, and to be administered 
solely for, the benefit of the public, no one, we are confident, will 



' Oxford and Cambridge are no exceptions. Inasmuch as they now accomplish 
nothing through their professors, they are no longer Universities ; and this even by 
their own statutes. 

" The term Patron, as applied to those to whom the election of public functionaries 
is confided, is not unobjectionable ; inasmuch as it comprehends both those who have 
at least a qualified right of property in the situations to which they nominate, and- 
those, who are purely trustees for the community. In the poverty of language, preci- 
sion must, however, often bend to convenience. 



PATRONAGE— ITS CONDITIONS. 347 

be intrepid enough to deny. On the part of a University pat- 
ron, such denial would be virtually an act of official suicide. 
Assuming, therefore, this as incontrovertible, it necessarily fol- 
lows : — 

1°, That the reason of lodging this patronage in certain hands, 
was the belief held at the time by the public or its administra- 
tors, that these were, under circumstances, the best qualified to 
work out the intention of the trust; consequently, if this belief, 
be subsequently found erroneous, or, if circumstances change, so 
as to render either these hands less competent to discharge the 
duty, or others more ; then is the only reason gone for the longer 
continuance of the patronage in the original trustees, and it forth- 
with becomes the duty of the State to consign it anew to worthier 
depositaries. 

2°, That the patronage is wisely deposited in proportion as the 
depositary is so circumstanced as to be kept ever conscious of 
his character of trustee, and made to appreciate highly the im- 
portance of his trust. Consequently, that organization is radi- 
cally vicious, which conjoins in the same person, the trustee and 
the beneficiary ; in other words, where the academical patron and 
professor are identical. 

3°, That the patron has no claim to a continuance of his office, 
from the moment that the interest of the public demands its re- 
sumption, and transference to better hands. 

II. In the second place, in regard to the end which academical 
patronage proposes— the surest appointment of the highest qua- 
lifications — it is evident that this implies two conditions in the 
patron : — 1°, The capacity of discovering such qualifications; and, 
2°, The inclination to render such discovery effectual. 

In regard to the former: — The capacity of discovering the 
highest qualifications is manifestly in proportion to the higher 
intelligence of the patron, and to the wider comprehension of his 
sphere of choice. — The intelligence of the patron requires no 
comment. As to his sphere of choice, this may either be limited 
by circumstances over which he has no control, or it may be con- 
tracted, without external necessity, by his own incapacity or 
want of will. Religion, country, language, &c, may, on the one 
hand, by law, exclude from his consideration the worthiest objects 
of preference ; and on the other, the advantages attached to the 
office in his gift, may not afford an adequate inducement to those 
whom he finds most deserving of his choice. For these a patron 



348 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

has not to answer. But if he allow himself to be restricted in his 
outlook by sectarian and parly prejudices — above all, if he con- 
fine his choice to those only who will condescend to sue him as 
candidates for the office ; he certainly excludes from his consider- 
ation the greater proportion of those best qualified for the appoint- 
ment, possibly even the whole ; and the end of the trust confided 
to him remains most imperfectly accomplished. 

In regard to the latter condition — the disposition in the patron 
to render the discovery of the best qualified persons available : — 
It is evident that his power to do this must depend on the tempt- 
ation which he can hold out to their ambition. — A system of 
patronage is therefore good or bad, in proportion as it tends to 
elevate or to degrade the value of its appointments ; that is, as 
it tends to render them objects of competition or contempt. The 
value of an academical office, estimated by the inducements 
which it holds out to men of eminence, is a sum formed by an 
addition of sundry items. There are — 1°, The greater emolu- 
ment attached to it ; 2°, The less irksome and more intellectual 
character of its duty ; 3°, The amenity of situation, the agreeable 
society, and other advantages of the town and country in which 
the University is situated. These are more or less beyond the 
power of the patron. But, in another way, it is in the power of 
patrons, and of patrons only, greatly to raise or sink the value 
of academical appointments. As the patronage is administered, 
the professorial body is illustrious or obscure, and the place of 
colleague either an honor or a discredit. In one University, an 
appointment is offered by a spontaneous call, and prized as a cri- 
terion of celebrity. In another, even the chance of success must 
be purchased by humiliation ; success is but the triumph of 
favor, and an appointment the badge of servility and intrigue. 
Thus, under one set of patrons, a professorship will be accepted 
as a distinction by the person who would scorn to solicit, or even 
accept, a chair of thrice its emolument, under another. In one 
country the professorial status is high, and the academy robs the 
professions of the best abilities ; in another, it is low, and the 
professions leave the academy, however amply endowed, only 
their refuse. Of this, the comparative history of the European 
Universities, and our own in particular, afford numerous and 
striking proofs. 

III. In the third place, such being the nature, and such the 
end, of academical patronage, we must finally consider what is 



PATRONAGE— ITS CONDITIONS. 349 

the proper organizatiofi of its instruments ; in other words, what 
person or persons are most likely to feel intensely the obligations 
of the trust, and to be able to realize completely its intention. It 
is evident that the problem here, is, simply, how to find a patron, 
or how to constitute a board of patrons, that shall most certainly, 
and in the highest degree, possess these two qualities — Good Will 
and Capacity. 

In regard to good will — a patron will be well disposed pre- 
cisely in proportion as he has motives more and stronger to fulfill, 
fewer and weaker to violate, his duty. The aim, therefore, of an 
enlightened scheme of patronage, is, in the first place, to supply 
him with as many as possible of the one class, and in the second, 
to remove from him as many as possible of the other. 

As to the supply of direct motives : — Independently of the 
general interest which academic patrons, in common with all 
intelligent and patriotic 'citizens must feel in the welfare of their 
Universities, it is evident, that motives peculiarly determining 
them to a zealous discharge of their trust, will be given by con- 
necting their personal honor and dishonor with the appointment 
of worthy and unworthy professors ; and that this motive will 
be strong or weak, in proportion as, on the one hand, the honor 
or dishonor is more or less intense and enduring in its applica- 
tion, and on the other, as the patrons are persons of a character 
more or less alive to the public opinion of their conduct. These 
conditions determine the following principles, as regulating the 
organization of a board of academical patronage. 

1°, The patrons must be few: to the end that their responsibi- 
lity may be concentrated ; in other words, that the praise or 
blame attributed to their acts may not be weakened by dissemi- 
nation among numbers. 

2, The board of patrons must be specially constituted ad hoc ; 
at least, if it discharges any other function, that should be of an 
analogous and subordinate nature. Nothing tends more directly 
to lower in the eyes of the patron and of the public, the import- 
ance of an academical patronage ; consequently, nothing tends 
more to enervate and turn off the credit or discredit attached to 
its acts, and to weaken the sense of responsibility felt in its dis- 
charge, than the right of appointing professors in general, or, 
still more, of appointing to individual chairs, being thrown in as 
an accidental, and consequently a minor duty, to be lightly per- 
formed by functionaries not chosen as competent to this particular 



350 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

duty, but constituted for a wholly different purpose. — But with 
its patronage is naturally conjoined as an inferior function, the 
general superintendence of a University ; academical curators 
and patrons should in fact always he the same. 

3°, Where a country possesses more than one University, each 
should have its separate hoard of patronage ; in order that the 
patrons may have the motive of mutual emulation, and that 
public opinion may be formed on a comparative estimate. 

4°, The patrons should be, at least, conditionally permanent ; 
that is, not holding their office for life, but re-appointed, from 
time to time, if their conduct merit approval. And this for two 
reasons. Because honor and dishonor apply with less effect to 
a transitory patron — seldom known and soon forgotten; and be- 
cause as it is only after a considerable term of years that patrons 
can effect the elevation or decline of a University, so it is only a 
permanent patron who can feel a strong personal interest in the 
celebrity of a school, and to whom the glory of being the promoter 
of its prosperity, can operate as a high inducement. 

5°, To impress more deeply on the patrons the obligations and 
importance of their office, they should make oath, in the most 
solemn manner, on their entrance upon office, to the impartial 
and diligent discharge of their duty ; and perhaps in every report 
to the higher authority, they should declare upon their honor, 
and with special reference to their oath, that their choice has 
been determined, without favor, and solely by the pre-eminent 
qualifications of its object. 

6°, The patrons will be most likely to appreciate highly the 
importance of their function, and to feel acutely the praise or 
reprobation which their acts deserve, if taken from the class of 
society inferior, but only inferior, to the highest. If a patron is 
appointed from his rank or station — he is perhaps above the in- 
fluence of public opinion ; the office is to him only a subordinate 
distinction; and the very fact of his appointment, while it tells 
him that its duties are neither difficult nor momentous — for, was 
he selected for his ability to discharge them ? — is in fact the most 
pernicious precedent to him in his own disposal of the patronage 
itself. If the patron be of a low rank, he is probable patron only 
by official accident ; is too uninstructed to understand the im- 
portance of a duty thus abandoned to hazard ; is too groveling 
to be actuated by public opinion, ajid too obscure to be its object; 
while at the same time he is exposed to incentives to violate his 



PATRONAGE— ITS CONDITIONS. 351 

trust, strong in proportion to the impotence of the motives per- 
suading its fulfillment. That patron will perform his duty best, 
who owes his nomination solely to his competence ; who regards 
the office as his chiefest honor ; and who, without being the slave 
of public opinion, which he should be qualified to guide, is neither 
above or beneath its salutary influence. 

The removal of all counter motives from a patron, to the dis- 
charge of his duty, or of all ability to carry such into effect, 
determines the following precautions: 

7°, The patrons must be a body as much as possible removed 
from the influence of personal motives, apart from or opposed to 
their preference of the most worthy. The professorial college 
will therefore, of all others, not constitute the body by which it 
is itself elected. 

8°, The patrons should have the virtual and recommendatory, 
but not the formal and definitive appointment. This should belong 
to a higher authority — says a Minister of State. A non-acquies- 
cence in their recommendation, which would of course necessitate 
their resignation, and throw them back on their electors, could 
never take place without strong reason : but its very possibility 
would tend effectually to prevent its occurrence. 

9°, "With the report of their decision, the patrons should be 
required to make an articulate statement of the grounds on which 
their opinion has been formed, that the object of their preference 
is the individual best qualified for the vacant chair. 

Touching the quality of capacity—- that is, the power of discov- 
ering and making effectual the discovery of the best accomplished 
individuals— this affords the following conditions: 

1°, The patrons should be appointed specially ad hoc, and from 
their peculiar qualification for the discharge of the office. 

2°, They should be men of integrity, prudence, and competent 
acquirement, animated by a love of literature and science, and 
of an unexclusive liberality ; in short, either knowing them- 
selves, or able to discover, who are the individuals worthy of 
preference. 

3°, The patronage should be vested in a small plurality. In 
more than one ; — to obviate the errors of individual judgment, and 
to resist the influences that might prove too powerful for a single 
will ; to secure the animation of numbers, a division of labor, 
more extensive, applicable, and impartial information, opposite 
views, and a many-sided discussion of their merits. Not in 



352 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

many ; — that the requisite intelligence, &c, maybe possessed by 
the whole body ; that the presence of all may be insured : that 
each may feel his importance, and co-operate in the inquiries and 
deliberations; that they may understand each other; take, in 
common, comprehensive, anticipative views ; and concur in active 
measures to obtain the object of their preference : for, be it re- 
membered, a numerous body can elect only out of those whom 
a situation suits ; a small body out of those who suit the situa- 
tion. Reasoning and experience prove that this patronage is best 
vested in a board varying from two to five members. Four is 
perhaps the preferable number ; the senior patron having, in case 
of divided opinions, a decisive suffrage. 

4°, The office of academical patron should be permanent, under 
the condition we have already stated ; as no other is more de- 
pendent for its due discharge on the experience of the functionary, 
on the consistency and perseverance of his measures. 

The principles thus manifest in theory, have been universally 
and exclusively approved in practice. Precisely as they have 
been purely and thoroughly applied, have Universities always 
risen to distinction ; precisely as they have been neglected or 
reversed, have Universities always sunk into contempt. 

The intrinsic excellence of a school is not to be confounded 
with its external prosperity, estimated by the multitude of those 
who flock to it for education. Attendance may be compelled by 
exclusive privileges, or bribed by numerous endowments. [Its 
degree may be still required for this or that profession, though 
no longer furnishing a true certificate of the relative acquirement 
which it originally guaranteed. (The degrees of the English 
Universities). Its degree, with ostensible higher honors, may be 
offered at really as cheap a rate as the corresponding license of 
less privileged incorporations. (The medical degrees of, some at 
least, of our Scottish Universities.)] The accident of its locality, 
as in a great city ; the cheapness of its instruction ; the distance 
of other seminaries, or seminaries of superior character ; and, 
withal, the low standard of learning in a nation, and the conse- 
quent ignorance of its defects, may all concur in causing the ap- 
parent prosperity of a University, which merits, from its real ex- 
cellence, neither encouragement nor toleration. It is only when 
Universities are placed in competition, and that on equal terms, 
that the two attributes are convertible. To this explanation we 
must add another. Our assertion only applies to Universities in 



EXCELLENCE AND PROSPERITY NOT IDENTICAL. 353 

the circumstances of their more modern co-existence. When the 
same religion, studies, and literary language, connected Europe 
into a single community ; when Universities, cosmopolite in char- 
acter, few in number, and affording the only organs, not of in- 
struction and exercise merely, but of publication, counted by 
myriads the scholars they attracted from the most distant coun- 
tries ; when, opening to their graduates a free concurrence in th© 
then all-glorious field of academical instruction, prelates, and even 
princes, sought to earn from the assembled nations the fame of 
talent, eloquence, and learning; then the best instructor naturally 
found his place, and an artificial patronage was as inexpedient 
as it would have proved impracticable. Its necessity arose during 
the progress of a total change of circumstances. "When Christen- 
dom was shattered into fragments ; when the Universities, mul- 
tiplied to excess in every country, speaking each only its own 
vernacular, and dwindled to sectarian schools, no longer drew 
distant nations to their seat, and concentrated in a few foci the 
talent of the Christian world ; when the necessity of personal 
congress at points of literary communication was superseded by 
the press ; when the broad freedom of academical instruction was 
replaced by a narrow monopoly, and even the interest of the 
monopolists themselves remained no longer solely dependent on 
their ability and zeal; — in this complete reversal of all old rela- 
tions, the necessity of a careful selection of the academical teacher 
arose, and henceforward the worth of Universities was regulated 
by the wisdom and integrity of those to whom this choice was 
confided. 

The excellence of a University is to be estimated by a criterion 
compounded of these two elements : — 1. The higher degree of 
learning and ability displayed by its professorial body ; and, 
2. The more general diffusion of these qualities among the mem- 
bers of that body. 

Taking a general survey of the European Universities, in their 
co-existence and progress, and comparing them by this criterion 
we find three groups prominently distinguished from the others, 
by the higher celebrity of a larger proportion of their professors. 
These are the Italian — the Dutch — and, for nearly the last 
hundred years, the German Protestant Universities. On exam- 
ining their constitution, we find that the only circumstance of 
similarity among themselves, and of contrast to all others, is the 
machinery of their patronage and superintendence, consisting of 

Z 



354 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

a board of trustees specially constituted for the purpose, small, 
intelligent, perennial. 

Of the three great Universities of Italy, Bologna, Padua, and 
Pisa, our information is less precise in relation to the first ; but, 
although the most wealthy and ancient of the Italian schools, 
Bologna did not continue to equal her two principal rivals in the 
average celebrity of her teachers. Of Pavia we need not speak. 

The Italian were originally distinguished from the Transalpine 
Universities by hvo differences ; — the early introduction of sala- 
ried teachers ; and the restriction of privileged instruction to 
these teachers, who in Italy, as throughout the rest of Europe, 
enjoyed their salary under condition of gratuitous instruction. 
The evil consequences of such a system were, however, in Italy, 
counteracted by the circumstances under which it was carried 
into operation. 

The endowed chairs were there of two kinds — Ordinary and 
Extraordinary. The former, fewer in number, were generally 
of higher emolument than the latter. For each subject of import- 
ance there were always two, and commonly three rival chairs; 
and a powerful and ceaseless emulation was thus maintained 
among the teachers. The Ordinary Doctors strove to keep up 
their celebrity— to merit a still more lucrative and creditable 
appointment — and not to be surpassed by their junior competi- 
tors. The Extraordinary Doctors struggled to enhance their 
reputation — to secure their re-election — and to obtain a chair of 
higher emolument and honor. 

The appointment, continuance, and dismissal of professors, long 
appertained to the Students (there comparatively old), who, in 
their Faculties and Nations, annually or biennially elected to all, 
6r to a large proportion of the chairs. 

In Padua, the policy of the Venetian Senate was, from the 
middle of the fifteenth century (when the ancient numerous 
resort of the University had declined), directed to the restriction 
and abolition of this popular right, and after several fruitless, 
and sundry partial measures, the privilege was at length, in 1560, 
totally withdrawn. The Venetian Fathers were, however, too 
wise in their generation to dream of exercising this important 
function themselves. Under the Republic of Padua, the Princes 
of Carrara, and the Venetian domination, prior to 1515, two, and 
subsequently /owr Paduan citizens, of distinguished prudence, had 
been chosen to watch over the University, and to suggest the 



ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES— PISA. 355 

persons proper to be nominated to vacant chairs. In 1516, they 
were reduced to three, and the election of these academical Tri- 
umvirs (Triumviri Studiorum, Moderatores Academics, Rifor- 
matori dello Studio di Padova) intrusted to the six senators of 
the venerable College of Seniors, by whose wisdom the most im- 
portant affairs of the Republic were administered. To this small 
and select body of Moderators, the Senate delegated the general 
care of the University; and, in particular, that of looking around 
through Europe for the individuals best qualified to supply the 
wants of the University. Nor were they easily satisfied. The 
plurality of concurrent chairs (which long continued) superseded 
the necessity of hasty nominations ; and it not unfrequently 
happened that a principal Ordinary ivas vacant for years, before 
the Triumvirs found an individual sufficiently worthy of the 
situation. On the other hand, where the highest celebrity was 
possibly to be obtained, nothing could exceed the liberality of the 
Senate, or the zeal of the Moderators ; and Padua was thus long 
eminently fortunate, in her competition for illustrious teachers 
with the most favored Universities of Europe. 

In Pisa, the students do not appear to have ever exercised so 
preponderant an influence in the election of their teachers as in 
Padua, or even Bologna. From the period of the restoration of 
the University by Lorenzo de' Medici, the academical patronage 
of the state was virtually exercised by a small, intelligent and 
responsible body. In 1472, the Senate of Florence decreed that 
five Prefects should be chosen out of the citizens, qualified for 
the magistracy, to whom should be confided the superintendence 
both of the Florentine and Pisan Universities. These were annu- 
ally elected ; but as re-election was competent, the body was in 
reality permanent. Lorenzo appears among the first. In 154$, 
Cosmo de' Medici gave new statutes to the University of Pisa!) 
with which that of Florence had been united. By these, beside 
the Prefects, who were not resident in Pisa, a Curator or Provi- 
sor was established on the spot. This office was for life ; nor 
merely honorary, for attached to it was the Priorship of the 
Knights of St. Stephen. The Curator was charged with the 
general superintendence of student and professor ; and whatever 
directly or indirectly concerned the well-being of the University. 
was within his sphere. In the appointment of professors, lie 
exercised a great and salutary influence. The Prefects were the 
definitive electors ; it Was, however, the proximate duty of the 



256 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

Curator to look around for the individuals suited to the wants 
Of the University, and to bring their merits under the judgment 
Of the Prefects. How beneficially the Curator and Prefects acted 
as mutual stimuli and checks, requires no comment. 

By this excellent organization of the bodies to whom their 
academical patronage 'was confided, Padua and Pisa, in spite of 
many unfavorable circumstances, long maintained a distinguished 
reputation ; nor was it until the system which had determined 
their celebrity was adopted and refined in other seminaries, that 
they lost the decided pre-eminence among the Universities of 
Europe. From the integrity of their patrons, and the lofty stan- 
dard by which they judged, the call to a Paduan or Pisan chair 
was deemed the highest of all literary honors. The status of 
Professor was in Italy elevated to a dignity, which in other 
countries it has never reached ; and not a few of the most illus- 
trious teachers in the Italian seminaries, were of the proudest 
nobility in the land. While the Universities of other countries 
had fallen from Christian and cosmopolite, to sectarian and local 
schools, it is the peculiar glory of the Italian, that under the 
enlightened liberality of their patrons, they still continued to 
assert their European universality. Creed and country were in 
them no bar ; the latter not even a reason of preference. For- 
eigners of every nation are to be found among their professors ; 
and the most learned man of Scotland (Dempster) sought in a 
Pisan chair, that theatre for his abilities which he could not find 
at home. When Calvinist Leyden was expatriating her second 
Boerhaave, the Catholic Van Swieten ; Catholic Pisa had drawn 
from Leyden the Calvinist foreigner Gronovius. In Schismatic 
England, a single sect excludes all others from the privileges of 
University instruction ; in Catholic Italy, even the academic 
chairs have not been closed against the heretic. 

The system was, however, carried to a higher perfection in the 
Dutch Universities ; and notwithstanding some impedimenta 
arising from religious restrictions (subsequent to the Synod of 
Dordt), its efficiency was in them still more conspicuously dis- 
played. 

It was first realized in Leyden, the oldest of these seminaries ; 
and from the greater means and more extensive privileges of that 
University, whose degrees were favored throughout France, iU 
operation was there more decisive. 

In reward of the heroic defense made by the citizens in the 



DUTCH UNIVERSITIES— LEYDEN. 357 

memorable siege of Leyden, they received from the States their 
choice of an immunity from taxation, or of a University. They 
chose the latter. But though a recompense to the city, and 
though the civic aristocracy was in no other country so prepon- 
derant as in Holland, the patronage of the new establishment 
was not asked by, nor conceded to, the municipality. Independ- 
ently of reason, experience had shown the evil effects of such a 
constitution in the neighboring University of Louvain, where the 
magistrates and the professors rivaled each other in their charw 
acter of patrons, 'to prove, by a memorable example, how the 
wealthiest endowments, and the most extensive privileges, only 
co-operate with a vicious system of patronage in sinking a ven- 
erable school into contempt. The appointment of professors, and 
the general superintendence of the new University, were confided 
to a body of three Curators, with whom was associated the Mayor 
of Leyden for the time being. One of these Curators was taken 
from the body of nobles, and chosen by them ; the two others, 
drawn from the cities of Holland, or from the courts of justice, 
were elected by the States of the province. The duration of the 
office was originally for nine years, but custom soon prolonged 
it for life. The Curators were recompensed by the high disti no- 
tion of their office, but were allowed a learned Secretary, with a 
salary proportioned to his trouble. 

The system thus established continues, to the present hour, in 
principle the same ; but the changes in the political circumstances 
of the country have necessarily occasioned changes in the consti- 
tution of the body — whether for the interest of the University is 
still a doubtful problem. Until the revolutionary epoch, no alter- 
ation was attempted in the college of Curators ; and its perma- 
nence, amid the ruin of almost every ancient institution, proves^ 
independently of other evidence, that all parties were at one in 
regard to its virtue and efficiency. In 1795, the four Curators 
were increased to Jive, and all made permanent. Of these, threa 
were elected by the national delegates, two by the municipality 
of Leyden ; and the spirit in which they were chosen, even dur- 
ing the frenzy of the period, is shown in the appointments of San- 
tenius and De Bosch — the most illustrious scholars in the cura- 
tory since the age of Douza. On the restoration of the House of 
Orange, and establishment of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, a 
uniform constitution was given to the Batavian and Belgian Uni- 
versities. By the statutes promulgated in 1815 for the former, 



"338 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

and in 1816 for the latter, it is provided that " in each Univer- 
sity" (these were now Lei/den, Utrecht, and Ghroningen, Louvain, 
Ghent, and Liege) "there shall be a board of Curators, consist- 
ing oifivc persons, distinguished both by their love of literature 
and the sciences, and by their rank in society." " The Curators 
shall take precedence according to the date of their appoint- 
ment ;" but in the statutes of the Belgian Universities, it is 
.stated, "the President shall be named by the King, and must 
•be resident in the town where the University is established." 
" These curators shall be nominated immediately by the King, 
and chosen — at least three-fifths of them — in the province where 
the University is established ; the two others may be chosen from 
the adjacent provinces." " The chief magistrate of the town in 
which the University is situated, is, in virtue, but only during 
the continuance, of his office, a member of the college of Cura 
tors." Besides the duties touching the superintendence and ad- 
ministration of the University, "when a chair falls vacant, the 
Curators shall propose to the Department of Instruction in the 
Arts and Sciences" (in the Batavian statutes, " to the ministry 
bf the Home Department") "two candidates for the situation, and 
•they shall subjoin to their proposal the reasons which have de- 
termined their choice. The definitive nomination shall be made 
by the King." To hold, annually, two ordinary and as many occa- 
sional meetings as circumstances may require. " The Curators 
shall, on their appointment, make, before the King, the following 
oath : I sivear {I promise) fidelity to the country and to the King. 
I swear to observe the regulations and enactments concerning 
academical establishments, in so far as they concern my function 

Of Curator of the University of , and to co-operate, in so 

far as in me lies, to its welfare and celebrity" Office of Cura- 
tor gratuitous ; certain traveling expenses allowed. " To every 
college of Curators a Secretary is attached, bearing the title of 
Secretary-inspector, and having a deliberative voice in their meet- 
ings. He shall be bound to residence in the town where the 
University is established, and when the college of Curators is 
not assembled, shall watch that the measures touching the high 
instruction and the regulations of the University are observed, 
&c." This Secretary was salaried. 

"We have spoken specially of Leyden, but all the schools of 
Holland ow-cd their celebrity to the same constitution ; and the 
emulation of these different boards contributed greatly to their 



DUTCH UNIVERSITIES— LEYDEN. 359 

prosperity. The University of Franeker, founded in 1585, had 
three Curators and a Secretary. That of Groningen, founded in 
1615, was governed by a college of six Curators, appointed by 
the States of the province. Utrecht, raised from a Schola Illus- 
tris to a University in 1636, and in endowments second only to 
Leyden, had five Curators and a Secretary. For Harderwick 
(we believe) there was a board of five Curators and a President. 
The Athenaeum of Amsterdam, which emulated the Universities 
of Leyden and Utrecht, was governed by two Curators; and the 
other Scholse Illustres were under a similar constitution. On 
the curatorial system likewise was established the excellence of 
the classical schools of Holland ; and these, as recently admitted 
by the most competent authority in Germany (Thiersch), have 
been long, with a few individual exceptions in Grermany, the 
best throughout Europe. 

But let us consider how the system wrought. We shall speak 
only of Lei/den. 

It is mainly to John Van der Does, Lord of Noortwyk, a dis- 
tinguished soldier and statesman, but still more celebrated as a 
universal scholar, under the learned appellative of Janus Douza, 
that the school of Leyden owes its existence and reputation. As 
governor of that city, he had baffled the leaguer of Requesens ; 
and his ascendency, which moved the citizens to endure the hor- 
rors of the blockade, subsequently influenced them td prefer, to 
a remission of imposts, the boon of a University. In the con- 
stitution of the new seminary it was he who was principally con- 
sulted ; and his comprehensive erudition, which earned for him 
the titles of the " Batavian Varro," and " Common Oracle of the 
University," but still more his lofty views and unexclusive lib- 
erality, enabled him to discharge, for above thirty years, the func- 
tion of first curator with unbounded influence and unparalleled 
success. Gerard Van Hoogeveen and Cornelius de Coning were 
his meritorious colleagues. 

Douza's principles were those which ought to regulate the 
practice of all academical patrons ; and they were those of his 
successors. He knew, that at the rate learning was seen prized 
by the state in the academy, would it be valued by the nation ai 
large. In his eyes, a University was not merely a mouthpiece 
of necessary instruction, but at once a pattern of lofty erudi- 
tion, and a stimulus to its attainment. He knew that professors 
wrought more even by example and influence than by teaching ; 



360 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

that it was theirs to pitch high or low the standard of learning 
in a country ; and that as it proved arduous or easy to come up 
to them, they awoke either a restless endeavor after an ever loftier 
attainment, or lulled into a self-satisfied conceit. And this rela- 
tion between the professorial body and the nation, held also be- 
tween the professors themselves. Imperative on all, it was more 
particularly incumbent on the first curators of a University, to 
strain after the very highest qualifications ; for it was theirs to 
determine the character which the school should afterward main- 
tain ; and theirs to give a higher tone to the policy of their suc- 
cessors. With these views, Douza proposed to concentrate in 
Ley den a complement of professors all illustrious for their learn- 
ing ; and if the most transcendent erudition could not be procured 
for the University, with the obligation of teaching, that it should 
still be secured to it without. For example. Lipsius, "the 
Prince of Latin literature," had retired. Who was to replace 
him ? Joseph Scaliger, the most learned man whom the world 
has ever seen, was then living a dependent in the family of Roche- 
pozay. He, of all men, was if possible, to be obtained. The 
celebrated Baudius, and Tuningius, professor of civil law, were 
commissioned to proceed as envoys to France, with authority to 
tender the appointment, and to acquiesce in any terms that the 
illustrious scholar might propose. Nor was this enough. Not 
only did the Curators of the University and the Municipality of 
Leyden write in the most flattering strain to the " Prince of the 
literary Senate," urging his acquiescence, but also the States of 
Holland, and Maurice of Orange. 'Nay, the States and Stadthol- 
der preferred likewise strong solicitations to the King of France 
to employ his influence on their behalf with the " Phoenix of 
Europe ;" which the great Henry cordially did. The negotiation 
•succeeded. Leyden was illustrated; the general standard of 
learned acquirement in the country, and the criterion of profes- 
sorial competency, were elevated to a lofty pitch ; erudition was 
honored above riches and power, in the person of her favorite 
son ; nor had the fallen despot of Verona to regret his ancestral 
dignity, while republics, and princes, and kings, were suitors to 
the " Dictator of the Commonwealth of Letters." — After the death 
of Scaliger, who never taught, the curators, with a liberality in 
which they were soon after checked, tried to induce Julius Pa- 
civs (for whom the Universities of Germany, of France, emu 
though a heretic, of his native Italy, likewise contended) to 



DUTCH UNIVERSITIES— LEYDEN. 361 

accept a large salary, on condition only of residence in Leyden. 
But the place of Scaliger was to be filled by the only man who 
may contest with him the supremacy of learning; and Salmasius, 
who, though a Protestant, had been invited to Padua, but under 
the obligation of lecturing, preferred the literary leisure of Ley- 
den, with the emoluments and honors which its curators and 
magistracy lavished on him : — simply, that, as his call declares, 
" he might improve by conversation, and stimulate by example, 
the learned of the place ;" or, in the words of his funeral orator, 
" ut nominis sui honorem Academiee huic impertiret, scriptis 
eandem illustraret, preesentia condecoraret." And yet the work- 
ing professors of Leyden, at that time, formed a constellation of 
great men which no other University could exhibit. 1 

Such is a sample of the extraordinary efforts (for such sinecures 
were out of rule) of the first curators of Leyden, to raise their 
school to undisputed pre-eminence, and their country to the most 
learned in Europe. In this attempt they were worthily seconded 
by their successors, and favored by the rivalry of the patrons of 
the other Universities and Scholse Jllustres of the United Pro- 
vinces. And what was their success? In the Batavian Nether- 
lands, when Leyden was founded, erudition was at a lower ebb 
than in most other countries ; and a generation had hardly 
passed away when the Dutch scholars, of every profession, were 
the most numerous and learned in the world. And this not from 
artificial encouragement and support, in superfluous foundations, 
affording at once the premium of erudition, and the leisure for 
its undisturbed pursuit, for of these the Provinces had none ; 
not from the high endowments of academic chairs, for the mode- 
rate salaries of the professors were returned (it was calculated) 
more than twelve times to the community by the resort of foreign 
students alone ; but simply through the admirable organization 
of all literary patronage, by which merit, and merit alone, was 
always sure of honor, and of an honored, if not a lucrative ap- 
pointment ; — a condition without which Colleges are nuisances, 
and Universities only organized against their end. Leyden has 
been surpassed by many other Universities, in the emoluments 
and in the number of her chairs, but has been equaled by none 

1 [I may mention for the glory of England (or rather of Ireland), that Usher, when 
deprived of his Archiepiscopal emoluments, and a mere preacher in Lincoln's Inn, 
was invited to Leyden on the same honorable conditions. But Usher was, virtually, 
a Presbyterian.'] 



362 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

in the average eminence of her professors. Of these, the obscar- 
er names would be luminaries in many other schools; ami from 
the circle of her twelve professors, and in an existence of two 
hundred years, she can select a more numerous company of a 
higher erudition than can be found among the public teachers of 
any other seminary in the world. Far more, indeed, is admitted 
of Ley den by a learned German, himself an illustrious ornament 
of a rival University. " Hanc urbem," says Grawius (who, though 
a Protestant, was also invited by the Moderators of Padua) — 
"hanc urbem prsc ceteris nobilitavit, et super omnes extulit illus- 
trissimum et augustissimum illud sapiential et omnis doctrinse 
sacrarium, maximum orbis museum, in quo plures viri summi, 
qui principatum ingenii et eruditionis tenuerunt, Jloruere, quam 
in ceteris omnibus Europm AcademUs." 

That Leyden and the other Dutch Universities do not now re- 
tain their former relative superiority, is not owing to any absolute 
decline in them, or corruption in their system of patronage, but 
principally, if not entirely, to the fact, that as formerly that 
system wrought almost exclusively in their behalf, so it has 
now, for a considerable period, been turned very generally against 
them. The rise of the German Universities, in fact, necessarily 
determined a decline in the external prosperity of the Dutch. 

The Universities of the Empire, indeed, exhibit perhaps the 
most striking illustration of the exclusive efficacy of our prin- 
ciple. For centuries, these institutions had languished in an 
obscurity which showed the darker by contrast to the neighbor- 
ing splendor of the Batavian schools : when, by the simple applica- 
tion of the same curatorial patronage, with some advantages, and 
relieved from the religious restrictions which clogged its exercise 
in Holland, the Protestant Universities of Germany shone out at 
once with a lustre that threw almost into the shade the semina- 
ries by which they had themselves been previously eclipsed. 

The older German Universities, like those of France, the 
Netherlands, England, and Scotland, were constituted on the 
Parisian model; consequently, all graduates became, in virtue 
of their degree, ordinary members of the several faculties, with 
equal rights in the government of the corporation, and equal privi- 
leges and obligations as academical teachers. But though the 
privilege of lecturing in the University was preserved to the 
graduates at large, a general dispensation of its compulsory 
exercise was in Germany, as in other countries, soon rendered 



GERMAN UNIVERSITIES. 363 

possible by the endowment which took place of a certain num- 
ber of lectureships on the most important subjects, with salaries 
arising from ecclesiastical benefices, or other permanent funds. 
Of these, which were usually twelve, at most twenty, in all, the 
holders were, of course, bound to gratuitous instruction; for, 
throughout the European Universities the salary of an academi- 
cal teacher was always given (as a boon to the public, and more 
especially to the poor) in lieu of his exigible pastus. The devices 
by which this obligation has been, in various countries, variously 
{per fas, per nefas) eluded, would form a curious history. 

From toward the middle of the sixteenth century, no Grerman 
University was founded without a complement of such salaried 
teachers, or- — as they began from the commencement of that 
century, distinctively to be denominated — Professors ; and from 
this period, these appointments were also generally for life. These 
professors thus came to constitute the ordinary and permanent 
members of the faculties to which they belonged ; the other gradu- 
ates soon lost, at least on equal terms, the privilege of academi- 
cal teaching, and were wholly excluded from the everyday admin- 
istration of the University and its Faculties. 

To the salaried teachers thus established in the Universities — 
to them collectively, in colleges, or in faculties, the privilege was 
generally conceded of choosing their own colleagues ; and this in 
the fond persuasion, as the deed of concession usually bore, that 
the election would be thus always determined with knowledge, 
and by the superior merit of the candidate. The princes and 
free cities, who, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, founded 
Universities and endowed Professorships, abandoned to the salaried 
teachers this right either entirely or in part. Leipsic and Tue- 
bingen are examples of the one, Ingoldstadtof the other. In the 
sixteenth and following centuries, on the contrary, when the 
custom of endowing every public chair with a salary, and that 
for life, became more and more universal, no Gferman University 
was erected in which an unfettered right of election was granted 
to the professors ; and as experience had now proved the pernicious 
policy of such a concession to the older Universities, it was also 
from them generally withdrawn. The Senate or the Faculties 
obtained at most the privilege of presenting candidates for ap- 
pointment. Of this Koenigsberg is an instance. But until the 
foundation of the University of Halle, in 1694, by the statutes 
of which the chairs in the juridical and medical faculties were 



3b4 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

declared absolutely in tho appointment of the Prince, (thmigfe 
these bodies still ventured to interpose their advice) ; the seleciion 
and ordinary appointment of professors, under the various firms 
of presentation, commendation, proposal, or designation, was vir- 
tually exercised by the professorial bodies. There was, in fact, 
in the state, no other authority on whom this function peculiarly 
or responsibly devolved. It was the establishment of the Univer- 
sity of Goettingen, exactly a century ago, which necessitated a 
total and most salutary change of system. "The great Muench- 
hausen," says an illustrious professor of that seminary, "allowed 
our University the right of Presentation, of Designation, or of 
Recommendation, as little as the right of free Election; for he 
was taught by experience, that although the faculties of Univer- 
sities may know the individuals best qualified to supply their 
vacant chairs, that they are seldom or never disposed to propose 
for appointment the worthiest within their knowledge." 

The length to which this article has already run, warns us not 
to attempt a contrast of the past and present state of the German 
Universities. On this interesting subject, "satius est silere quam 
parum dicere." By Germans themselves, they are admitted to 
have been incomparably inferior to the Dutch and Italian Uni- 
versities, until the foundation of the University of Groettingen. 
Muenchhausen was for Goettingen and the German Universities, 
what Douza was for Leyden and the Dutch. But with this dif- 
ference : — Leyden was the model on which the younger Univer- 
sities of the Republic were constructed ; Goettingen the model on 
which the older Universities of the Empire were reformed. Both 
were statesmen and scholars. Both proposed a high ideal for 
the schools founded under their auspices ; and both, as first Cura- 
tors, labored with paramount influence in realizing this ideal lor 
the same long period of thirty-two years. Under their patronage 
Leyden and Goettingen took the highest place among the Uni- 
versities of Europe ; and both have only lost their relative suprem- 
acy, by the application in other seminaries of the same measures 
which had at first determined their superiority. 

From the mutual relations of the seminaries, states, and people 
of the Empire, the resort to a German University has in general 
been always mainly dependent on its comparative excellence; and 
as the interest of the several states was involved in the prosperity 
of their several Universities, the improvement of one of these 
schools necessarily occasioned the improvement of the others. 



GERMAN UNIVERSITIES— GOETTINGEN. 365 

No sooner, therefore, had Goettingen risen to a decided superior- 
ity through her system of curatorial patronage, and other subor- 
dinate improvements, than the different governments found it 
necessary to place their seminaries, as far as possible, on an equal 
footing. The nuisance of professorial recommendation, under 
which the Universities had so long pined, was generally abated; 
and the few schools in which it has been tolerated, subsist only 
through their endowments, and stand as warning monuments of 
its effect. Compare wealthy Greifswalde with poor Halle. The 
virtual patronage was in general found best confided to a small 
body of Curators; though the peculiar circumstances of the coun- 
try, and the peculiar organization of its machinery of government 
have recently enabled at least one of the German states to con- 
centrate, without a violation of our principles, its academical 
patronage in a ministry of public instruction. This, however, we 
can not now explain. It is universally admitted, that since their 
rise through the new system of patronage, the Universities of 
Germany have drawn into their sphere the highest talent of the 
nation ; that the new era in its intellectual life has been wholly 
determined by them ; as from them have emanated almost all the 
most remarkable products of German genius, in literature, erudi- 
tion, philosophy, and science. 

The matter of academical patronage has of course been dis- 
cussed in Germany, where education in general has engrossed 
greater attention than throughout the world beside ; and where, 
in particular, the merits of every feasible mode of choosing pro- 
fessors have been tried by a varied experience. Bat in that 
country the question has been hardly ever mooted. All are at 
one. 'Every authority supports the policy of concentrating the 
academical patronage in an extra-academical body, small, intelli- 
gent, and responsible ; and we defy the allegation of a single 
modern opinion in favor of distributing that patronage among a 
numerous body of electors — far less of leaving it, in any circum- 
stances, modification, or degree, under the influence of the pro- 
fessorial college. The same unanimity has also, we have noticed, 
always prevailed in Holland. As a specimen of the state of 
opinion in Germany on this decided point, we shall cite only 
three witnesses, all professors, all illustrious authors, and all of 
the very highest authority, in a question of learned education or 
of academical usage. These are Michaelis, Meiners, and Schleier- 
macher. 



366 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

Michaelis.— -" It is inexpedient to allow the choice of academical 
teachers to the professors themselves, be it either to the whole concilium 
or to the several faculties : and those Universities which exercise this right 
pay the penalty of the privilege. A choice of this description is always 
ill made by a numerous body, and a single intelligent judge is better than 

a multitude of electors In an election by professors, it is also to 

be feared that partiality, nepotism, complaisance to a colleague in expect- 
ation oi' a return, would be all-powerful ; and were it only a patriotic pref- 
erence of natives to strangers, still would the election be perverted. There 
is, moreover, a painful circumstance on which I am loath to touch. It is 
not impossible that the most intelligent judge among the professors, one in 
the enjoyment of distinguished influence and reputation, may, in the ap- 
pointment of a colleague, look that this reputation and influence be not 
eclipsed, and consequently, to the exclusion of all higher talent, confine 
his choice to such inferior qualifications as he can regard without "dread 
of rivalry. Professors may, it is true, be profitably consulted ; but no re- 
liance should be placed on the advice of those who have any counter in- 
terest to the new professor The direst evil in the choice of pro- 
fessors, and the certain prelude to the utter degradation of a University, is 
nepotism ; that is, if professors, whether directly through election, or in- 
directly through recommendation and advice, should succeed in obtaining 
academical appointments for sons, sons-in-law, &c, of inferior learning. 
The man who in this manner becomes extraordinary professor will, with- 
out merit, rise also to the higher office ; and the job which is tolerated on 
one occasion, must, from collegial friendship and even equitable reciprocity, 
be practiced on others." (Raisomzement ueber die pi'otestantischen TJni- 
versitaeten Deutscldand (1770), ii. p. 412.) 

Meiners. — " It should be no matter of regret that faculties have now 
lost the privilege of electing their members, or of recommending them for 
appointment. Certain as it is, that each faculty is best competent to 
determine what qualifications are most wanted for its vacant chairs, and 
who are the persons possessing these qualifications in the highest eminence ; 
certain also is it, that in very many cases the faculties would neither elect 
nor recommend the individual deserving of preference ; — that is, in all 
cases where they might apprehend that the worthiest would prejudice the 
interests, or throw into the shade the reputation, of themselves or friends. 
.... Let academical patrons be cautious as possible, and let them consult 
whom they may in the choice of public teachers, it can not but happen that 
they should commit occasional mistakes. And -when such occur, then is 
it that we are sure to hear — ' This could not have happened, had the 
University of Faculty been consulted.' Yet far worse and far more fre- 
quent errors would occur, did the faculties possess the right of free election, 
or did the higher authorities only choose out of a list presented by the pro- 
fessors 

" The actual choice and confirmation of public teachers is now, in most 
Universities, in the hands of the Prince, and of the curators appointed by 
him ; in very few is it exercised by the Universities themselves, or by their 
several faculties and functionaries. The Universities in which teachers 
are chosen and confirmed by the Prince, or by the curators nominated by 
him, are distinguished among themselves by this difference ; — that in 
some, the whole professorial body, or the several faculties, have either the 
right or the permission to propose, or at least recommend, candidates for 



TESTIMONY OF MEINERS. 367 

"the vacant places; and that, in others, they have not. The questions 
thus arise : — Is it better that the Universities themselves, or those in 
authority over them, should elect the professors? Is it better that the 
University or academical bodies should or should not have the right or 
permission to propose or recommend for appointment ? 

" It does not admit of doubt, that the choice of professors by extra-aca 
demical governors, is preferable to their election by the senatus or facul- 
ties. Curators, however learned they may be, still can not be so familiar 
with every department of erudition, as to be able, on every vacancy, to 
delerrnine, from their own knowledge, what individuals ought to be taken 
into consideration, and who of these is best deserving of preference. To this 
the most learned professor would be equally incompetent as the academical 
curators. It is not, however, difficult for well disposed and enlightened 
curators to obtain the information which they themselves can not possibly 
possess. They reside, in general, either in great cities, or, at least, in 
towns inhabited by men of learning, intimately acquainted with every 
branch of literature. They likewise in general personally know, in the 
Universities over which they preside, individuals of approved erudition, 
who can either afford advice themselves, or obtain it from others with 
whom they are acquainted. In either way, it is easy to ascertain both 
the number and the relative qualifications of those who would accept the 
office. This must be admitted ; nor can it be denied, that curators will in 
almost every instance elect those recommended to them as the worthiest, by 
the best informed and most impartial advisers. Curators have no other, 
at least no stronger interest, than the maintenance and increase of the pros- 
perity of the University intrusted to their care. This interest induces them, 
in the academical appointments, rigidly to scrutinize the qualifications of 
candidates, and to accord the preference only to the most deserving. The 
individuals out of whom they choose are not of their connections, and 
seldom even their personal acquaintances. There is thus rarely any ground 
of partiality or disfavor. If curators elect according to merit, they enjoy, 
besides the inestimable approbation of a good conscience, the exclusive 
honor of their choice. Do they allow themselves to be influenced by 
unsifted recommendations, to choose another than the worthiest — they 
expose themselves, by their neglect of duty, to public and private reproba- 
tion. 

" Academical senates and faculties possessing the privilege of self- 
election, have at least this advantage over curators of Universities, that 
they are able from their own knowledge, to appreciate the merit of candi- 
dates. But, on the other hand, they in this are inferior to curators, that 
we can rarely allow them credit for the will to elect him whom they are 
themselves conscious is best entitled to the place. The Worthiest are 
either opponents or rivals of the electors themselves, or of their friends. 
The electors, or their friends, have l-elations or favorites for whom they 
are desirous to provide. In most cases, likewise, the very interest of the 
electors excludes the most deserving, and prescribes the choice of an in- 
ferior candidate. Impartial elections can only take place in academical 
senates and faculties, when a chair is to be filled for which there is no 
competition, and the prosperity of which is for the direct and immediate 
advantage of the electors at large. It will be granted that the case occurs 
but seldom. As long, therefore, as we must admit that academical sen- 
ate? and faculties are more frequently partial than curators of Universi- 



368 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

ties are all ill-informed, so long must we maintain, that professors should 
be elected by a superior authority, and not by the University itself. This, 
history and experience have already for centuries determined. 

" Proposals and recommendations of candidates by senates and faculties, 
are a minor evil to actual election ; but still an evil which should be 
abolished or avoided. The same causes which determine the election of 
inferior merit, must operate against the proposal and recommendation of 
superior. Where it is the custom that the senate of faculty proposes a 
certain number of candidates, out of which the higher authorities make 
choice, there arises, if not an open nepotism, at least a provincial spirit 
of preference, and a secret conspiracy against foreigners, pernicious to a 
University. If the higher authorities, therefore, confine their choice to 
those thus recommended, they will always find that the vacant chairs are 
not provided with the most eminent professors. On the other baud, if 
theT disregard their recommendation, they aflbrd the academical bodies 
cause of umbrage, and render them the sworn enemies of the professor 
actually appointed ; complaints are raised of broken privileges ; and he 
who is forced on them through such a breach, becomes the object of odium 
or persecution. It is, therefore, highly advisable, that the founder, and 
those hi authority over Universities, should remain unfettered in the choice 
of professors ; and that in the exercise of this function, they should obtain 
the advice of those, within and without their Universities, who will a fiord 
them the most impartial and enlightened counsel." (Verivcdtung deuts- 
cher Univcnitaetcn (1801), i. p. 124, ii. p. 35.) 

ScHLEtEitMACHER. — "The University itself must certainly best know 
its want, when a vacancy occurs, or the opportunity oilers of extending 
the sphere of its instruction ; and as we are bound to presume in its mem- 
bers a knowledge of all that appears of any scientific importance in the 
country, ihey must likewise know from whence to obtain wherewithal to 
supply this want. But, alas! no one would on that account be inclined 
to accord to a University the choice of its teachers. Universities are, one 
and all, so infamous lor a spirit of petty intrigue, that were this privilege 
once conceded, what rational being is there who, from their devotion to 
party, from the passions excited in their literary feuds, and from their 
personal connections, could not anticipate tbe pernicious consequences?" 
(Gcdankcn ncbcr Univcrsitaelen in deutschem Siwi (1808), p. 97.) 

Having thus generalized the principles which govern a well- 
organized system of academic patronage, and historically shown 
that these principles have been actually applied in all the most 
distinguished Universities, we shall now conclude our discussion 
by considering the modes of appointing professors inusein Scotland. 

To say nothing of the special patronage of a few individual 
chairs, the merits of which we can not at present pause to con- 
sider, the general systems of academical patronage here preva- 
lent arc three ; the trust being deposited in the hands either of 
a Municipal Magistracy — of the Professorial body itself — or of 
the Crown. 

The first of these systems, though not unknown in one of the 



ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE BY MUNICIPALITIES. 369 

other Universities, is preponderant only in that of Edinburgh, 
where the far greater number of professors are elected imme- 
diately by the suffrages of the thirty-three members of the Town 
Council. 

This system is generally and justly admitted to be greatly 
preferable to the other two. An admission, however, of the kind, 
proves aught rather than the absolute excellence of the method. 
It is melancholy indeed that such a system should be tolerated in 
our country ; still more melancholy that it must be lauded as the 
best we have. The utmost that can be said in its favor is, that 
compared with the other two, it is of itself less disposed to evil, 
and more capable of being inclined to good. 

A body like the Edinburgh Town Council as it was, fulfills 
none of the conditions of a well-organized board of academical 
patrons. From their education and rank in society, they were, 
on the average, wholly destitute of that information and intel- 
ligence which such patrons ought to possess ; they were a col- 
lection of individuals — numerous — transitory — obscure ; and the 
function itself was an appendage wholly accidental to their office. 

Such a body of patrons was wholly incapable of an active ex- 
ercise of their trust. Their unintelligence, numbers, and fluctu- 
ating association, prevented them from anticipating and following 
out any uniform and systematic measures. No general principle 
determined among them a unity of will. They could not attempt 
an extensive survey for a discovery of the highest qualifications ; 
nor make a tender of the appointment to those who might accept 
what they would not solicit. Their sphere of choice was thus 
limited to actual candidates ; and the probabilities of success 
again always limited candidates to those whose merits were sup- 
ported or supplied by local and adventitious circumstances. Even 
in the narrow circle of candidates, the choice of the civic patrons 
was always passive ; and its character for good or ill, wholly 
dependent on the nature of some external determination. The 
judgment of a proper body of patrons should be higher than that 
of the community at large ; it should guide, not merely follow, 
public opinion. This, however, was not to be expected from a 
body of burgesses ; in fact, it has been the only merit of the 
Town Council of Edinburgh, either claimed or accorded, that 
public opinion was not without a certain weight in their decision. 
But public opinion is not unfrequently at fault; it favors the 
popular and superficial, not the learned and profound. The qual- 

Aa 



370 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AMD SUPERINTENDENCE. 

ifications of a professor are frequently wholly beyond its cogni- 
zance ; and still more frequently the qualifications of candidates 
are unknown. Public opinion was thus either not expressed in 
favor of any candidate, or it was divided ; and the patrons solely 
abandoned to accident, or the impulsion of some less salutary in- 
fluence — an influence frequently found omnipotent, even against 
public opinion itself. 

The Town Council of Edinburgh was, in fact, peculiarly ex- 
posed to have its patronage corrupted through a variety of chan- 
nels ; and the history of the University shows, that the highest 
merit, and the public opinion of that merit most emphatically 
pronounced, have never, in a single instance, prevailed, when a 
perverse influence has been adequately brought to bear on the 
electors. Nor could it possibly be otherwise. A body of electors 
more completely relieved of responsibility, and the consciousness 
of responsibility, could scarcely be imagined. We had here a 
body, itself the creature, and consequently the pliant instrument, 
of favor, intrigue, and corruption. The members of this body 
were men, in general, wholly unable to represent to themselves 
the high importance of their decision, or to be actuated by any 
refined conception of their duty ; nor could public reprobation be 
felt at all, when the responsibility was so pulverized among a 
passing multitude of nameless individuals. Such a body was, of 
all others, liable to be led astray from their duty by those who 
had an interest in perverting their choice. " It is remarkable," 
says Dr. Chalmers, "that some of the chief deviations by Magis- 
trates and Councils in the exercise of this trust, have been 
brought about by the influence of leading men in the Church or 
in the University." This influence, which was long as systemat- 
ically as perniciously exerted, operated equally to the corruption 
of the Church and of the University ; and the last, worst form 
of academical patronage, that by the professorial body itself, was 
thus covertly at work, without even the trifling checks which 
accompanied its open exercise. Itself the breath of party, the 
Town Council hardly pretended to impartiality when politics dis- 
turbed its choice ; and the most transcendent claims were of no 
avail against the merits of a municipal relationship. A large 
proportion of the electors were necessarily in dependent relations ; 
and some hardly above the condition of paupers. They were thus 
wholly incapacitated from resisting the various sinister influences 
which assailed their integrity ; and even direct bribery, which is 



ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE BY MUNICIPALITIES. 371 

known to have been sometimes tried, was probably not always 
unsuccessful. It was thus, only when left to themselves, and to 
the guidance of public opinion, that the civic patrons could be 
trusted ; — only when the powers which commanded their voices 
had no sufficient interest in warping their decision. The fact, 
that they not only tolerated, but expected, the personal solicita- 
tions of candidates and their friends, proves also, of itself, that 
they had no true conception of their office ; — that they thought 
of granting a favor, not merely of performing a duty. Patrons 
who exercise their power only as a trust will spurn all canvassing 
as an insult, if candidates do not feel it as a disgrace. Judges 
were once courted in this and other countries in a similar man- 
ner. We look back on such a practice as on a marvel of political 
barbarism ; and it will not, we trust, be long until we recollect 
with equal wonder the abomination of solicited trustees. 

That municipal magistrates could possibly exercise, of them- 
selves, the function of academic patrons, seems in no other coun- 
try to have been imagined ; and even in Edinburgh, the right of 
choice was originally limited by conditions which the Town Coun- 
cil have only latterly evaded. Their election formerly expressed 
only the issue of a public concourse of candidates, and disputation 
in the Latin tongue ; and the decision, too, we believe, was only 
valid when sanctioned by the approval of the Presbytery. "We 
recollect only two foreign Universities in which the municipality 
were patrons — Louvain and Altdorf. In the former, this right, 
which extended only to certain chairs, was controlled by the fac- 
ulties, whose advice was to be always previously taken ; and the 
decline of that great and wealthy seminary was mainly determined 
by its vicious patronage, both as vested in the University and in 
the Town. Altdorf, on the other hand, founded and maintained 
by the free city of Nuremberg, was about the poorest University 
in G-ermany, and long one of the most eminent. Its whole en- 
dowments never rose above d£800 a year ; and till the period of 
its declension, the professors of Altdorf make at least as distin- 
guished a figure in the history of philosophy, as those of all the 
eight Universities of the British Empire together. On looking 
closely into its constitution, the anomaly is at once solved. The 
patrician Senate of Nuremberg were not certainly less qualified 
for academical patrons than the Town Council of Edinburgh ; but 
they were too intelligent and patriotic to attempt the exercise of 
such a function. The nomination of professors, though formally 



372 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

ratified by the senate, was virtually made by a board of four 
Curators; and what is worthy of remark, so long as curatorial 
patronage was a singularity in G-ermany, Altdorf maintained its 
relative pre-eminence — losing it only when a similar mean was 
adopted in the more favored Universities of the Empire. 

These observations are, in their whole extent, applicable only 
to the old Town Council ; but it is manifest that all the princi- 
pal circumstances which incapacitated that body, under its for- 
mer constitution, for a competent exercise of academic patronage, 
continue still to operate under its present ; and if some minor 
objections are removed, others, perhaps of even greater moment, 
have arisen. On these, however, we can not at present touch. 
Indeed, it is only in a country far behind in all that regards the 
theory and practice of education, that the notion of intrusting a 
body like a municipal magistracy with such a trust, would not 
be treated with derision ; and we have so high an opinion of the 
intelligence and good intentions of the present Town Council, that 
we even confidently expect them to take the lead in depositing 
in proper hands that important part of their public trust, which 
they are unable adequately to discharge themselves. [But 
alas !] 

Their continuance as patrons would, in fact, seal the downfall 
of the University of Edinburgh ; unless, what is now impossible, 
systems of patronage still more vicious should continue to keep 
down the other Universities of Scotland to their former level. 
All of these are superior to Edinburgh in endowments ; and if 
the one decisive superiority which Edinburgh has hitherto enjoy- 
ed over them, in the comparative excellence of her patronage, be 
reversed in their favor, the result is manifest. 

From the best of our Scottish systems of academical patronage, 
we now pass to the worst ; and public opinion is, even in this 
country, too unanimous in condemnation, to make it necessary to 
dwell upon its vices. We mean that of self-patronage. 

In the unqualified form in which it has so long prevailed in 
Scotland, it was tried, in the darkness of the middle ages, in a 
very few of the continental Universities ; and in these the expe- 
riment was brief. In an extremely modified shape, and under 
circumstances which greatly counteracted its evils, it was tole- 
rated for a considerable period in the Grerman Universities ; expe- 
rience, however, proved its inexpediency under every mitigation, 
and it has been long in that coimtry, as we have shown, abso- 



ACADEMICAL SELF-PATHONAGE. 373 

lutely and universally condemned. [See the authorities above, 
p. 366-368.] 

As established in Scotland, this system violates, or rather 
reverses, almost every condition by which the constitution of a 
board of patrons ought to be regulated. — In the first place, by 
conjoining in the same persons the right of appointment and the 
right of possession, it tends to confound patronage with property, 
and thus to deaden in the trustee the consciousness of his charac- 
ter ; in fact, to foster in him the feeling, that, in the exercise of 
his function, he is not discharging an imperative duty, but doing 
arbitrarily what he chooses "with his own." — In the second place, 
as it disposes the patron to forget that he is a trustee, so it also 
primes him with every incentive to act as a proprietor. Natural 
affection to children and kindred ; 1 personal friendship and enmi- 
ty ; party (and was there ever a University without this curse ?) ; 
jealousy of superior intelligence and learning, operating the 
stronger the lower the University is degraded ; the fear of an un- 
accommodating integrity ; and finally, the acquiescence even of 
opposite parties in a job, with the view of a reciprocity ; — these 
and other motives effectually co-operate to make the professorial 
patron abuse his public duty to the furtherance of his private 
ends. The single motive for bestowing on professors the power 
of nominating their colleagues, was the silly persuasion that they 
were the persons at once best able to appreciate ability, and the 
most interested in obtaining it. If this were true — if it were not 
the reverse of truth, we should surely find our professorial patrons 
in Scotland, like the Curators of foreign universities, looking 
anxiously around, on every vacancy, for the individual of highest 
eminence, and making every exertion to induce his acceptance 
of the chair. But has it been heard that this primary act of a 
patron's duty was ever yet performed by a college of professorial 
patrons ? In the nature of things it could hardly be. For why ? 
This would be an overt admission, that they were mere trustees 
performing a duty, not proprietors conferring a favor. Were the 
highest qualifications once recognized as the sole rule ; why not 



1 " Hence the hereditary successions in colleges which are thus patronized — the 
firm and infrangible compacts, which sometimes last for generations, cemented as they 
are by the affinities of blood and relationship — the decaying lustre of chairs once 
occupied by men of highest celebrity and talent, but the very ascendency of whose 
influence when living, or of whose names after they were dead, effected the transmis- 
sion of their offices to a list of descendants." — Dr. Chalmers. 



374 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

make its application universal ? But then, the standard of pro- 
fessorial competence would be inconveniently raised ; the public 
would expect that the reputation of the University should not be 
allowed to fall ; and the chairs could therefore no longer be dealt 
about as suited the private interest of the patrons. The private 
interest of the patrons, therefore, determined an opposite policy. 
The standard of professorial competence must be kept down — it 
seldom needed to be lowered — to the average level of their rela- 
tives and partisans. Not only must no invitation be given to 
men of reputation, they must be disgusted from appearing as 
candidates. The value of the chairs, as places of honor, must be 
reduced ; that, as places of emolument, they might not, and that 
in an unlearned country, be beyond the reach of ordinary men. 
Instead of receiving an unsolicited call to take his seat among 
the members of an illustrious body, the man of highest reputa- 
tion, to obtain the chance even of a chair, must condescend to 
beg the lowered office as a favor, from a crowd of undistinguished 
individuals, to obtain whose voices was no credit, and not to ob- 
tain them would still be felt as a disgrace ; and submit to the 
humiliation of being fellow-candidate of all and sundry, whom 
the humble vanity of standing for a chair, or personal and party 
interest with the electors, called — and with probable success — 
into the field. To be left to divide the cake in the shade, has 
been the aim of all professorial patronage. We do not assert, 
that under this system no men of distinguished merit have illus- 
trated our Universities ; — far from it ; but we assert that of all 
others it tends to make celebrity the exception, obscurity the 
rule. And of the small number of great names to which the 
professorial patronage can lay claim, some conquered their ap- 
pointments by other reasons than their merits, and more took 
their patrons and the world by surprise in their subsequent repu- 
tation. We know something of the history of foreign Universities, 
and something, at least by negation, of the history of our own. 
And this we affirm, that if a premium were given to the Univer- 
sity which could exhibit among its professors the largest propor- 
tion of least distinguished names, the Scottish Universities, where 
self-election is prevalent, would have it only to contend for among 
themselves. 

We may here anticipate an objection we have often heard, that, 
however bad in theory, the patronage of the Scottish Universities 
s found, in practice, to work well ; these seminaries fully ac- 



SCOTLAND LOW IN LEARNING. 375 

complishing their end, as shown "by the flourishing state of learn- 
ing in the country. 

Assuming, with the ohjeetor, the effect produced, as a test of 
the instrument producing, 1 this patronage must on the contrary 
be granted to have wrought almost worse in practice, than rea- 
soning could have led us to anticipate ; erudition, in every higher 
acceptation, being in Scotland at a lower pass than in any other 
country almost of Europe.- — "Without, we think, any overweening 
patriotism, we may assert, that no people in modern times has 
evinced more natural ability than our own ; and in all the depart- 
ments of knowledge where intellectual vigor, rather than extensive 
erudition, may command success, the Scotch are at least not in- 
ferior to any other nation in the world. " Animi illis," says Bar- 
clay, "in qusecunque studia inclinant, mirifico successu inclyti; 
ut nullis major patientia castrorum, vel audacia pugnae, et Musse 
nunquam delicatius habeant, quam cum inciderunt in Scotos." 
Nor, assuredly, have they shown an incapacity for the highest 
scholarship, when placed in circumstances disposing them to its 
cultivation. On the contrary, no other people have achieved, so 
much in this department in proportion to their means. From the 
petty portion of her scanty population, whose education was not 
stunted in her native seminaries, Scotland can show at least some 
three or four more consummate masters of a Latin style, and that 
both in prose and verse, than all the other nations of the British 
Empire can exhibit, with ten times her population, and so many 
boasted schools. Nature gives ability, education gives learning ; 
and that a people of such peculiar aptitude for every study, should 
remain behind all others in those departments and degrees of 
erudition, for the special cultivation of which Universities were 
established., proves, by the most appropriate of evidence, that 
those of Scotland are, in their present state, utterly unqualified 
for the higher purposes of their existence. Of these correlative 
facts, we shall supply two only, but these, significant illustrations.. 
[On these compare also Ed. No. ii.] 

The first. It will be admitted, that a very trifling fraction of 
the cultivated population of any country can receive its education 
and literary impulsion in foreign lands ; consequently, if the sem- 
inaries of Scotland were now incomparably inferior, as instru- 

1 Though the'priiicipal, we do not, of course, hold that a good academical patronage 
is the only condition of high learning in a country. An exposition of all the concur- 
rent causes of this result would form the subject of an important discussion. 



376 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

ments of erudition, that the immense majority of Scottish scholars 
must have owed their education exclusively to Scottish schools. 

Now, on this standard, what is the case ? Of Scottish scholars, 
all of the highest eminence, and far more than nine-tenths of those 
worthy of the name of scholar at all, have been either educated 
in foreign seminaries, or their tastes, and the direction of their 
studies, determined in the society of foreign learned men. 

Nor is the second illustration less remarkable. It will be ad- 
mitted, that the erudition of a national (we do not mean merely 
established) church, affords not only a fair, but the most favor- 
able criterion of the erudition of a nation. For, in the first place ; 
Theology, comprehending (or rather being itself contained in) a 
wider sphere of scholarship than any other learned profession, 
and its successful cultivation necessarily proportioned to the 
degree in which that scholarship is applied ; it follows, that the 
Theology of a country can never transcend, and will rarely fall 
beneath, the level of its erudition. In the second; the clergy 
form every where the most numerous body of literary men ; con- 
sequently, more than any other, express the general diffusion of 
literary accomplishment throughout a people. In the third; the 
clergy or those educated for the church, constitute the class from 
which tutors, schoolmasters, and professors, are principally taken. 
Their proficiency and example thus react most powerfully and 
extensively, either to raise and keep up learning, or to prevent its 
rising among all orders and professions. In the fourth ; as almost 
exclusively bred in the schools and Universities of their country, 
they reflect more fairly than the rest of the educated ranks, the 
excellences and defects of the native seminaries. And in the 
fifth ; as their course of academical study is considerably longer 
than that of the other learned professions, they must be viewed 
as even a highly favorable specimen of what their native semina- 
ries can accomplish. 

Now, in Scotland, on this criterion, what is the result ? Simply 
this : Though perhaps the country in Europe where religious in- 
terests have always maintained the strongest hold, Scotland, in 
the history of European Theology, has, for nearly two centuries, 
no name, no place. For nearly two centuries, the home-bred 
clergy of Scotland, established and dissenting, among their count- 
less publications of a religious character, some displaying great 
and various talent, have, with two [one], not illustrious exceptions, 
contributed not a single work to the European stock of theologi- 



ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE BY THE CROWN. 377 

cai erudition ; ) and for an equal period, they have not produced 
a single scholar on a level with a fifth-rate philologer of most 
other countries. In these respects, many a dorf in Grermany or 
Holland has achieved far more than the broad realm of Scotland. 
A comparison of the Scotch and English Churches affords a curi- 
ous illustration in point. In the latter, the clergy have a toler- 
able classical training, but for ages have enjoyed, we may say, 
no theological education at all. In the former, the clergy must 
accomplish the longest course of theological study prescribed in 
any country, but with the worst and shortest classical prepara- 
tion. Yet in theological erudition, what a contrast do the two 
Churches exhibit ! And this, simply because a learned scholar 
can easily slide into a learned divine, without a special theological 
education ; whereas no theological education can make a man 
a competent divine, who is not a learned scholar )— theology being, 
in a human sense, only a philology and history, applied by phi- 
losophy. — But again. In other countries, the clergy, or those edu- 
cated for the church, as a class, take the highest place in the 
higher departments of learning. Scotland, on the contrary, is 
singular in this, that all her scholars of any eminence, have, for 
almost two centuries, been found exclusively among the laity, 
and these, as we have noticed, rarely educated in her native in- 
stitutions. 

The third and last mode of appointing to academical offices in 
Scotland, is nomination by the Crown.- — There being no special 
department, in our Government, for public instruction, this pa- 
tronage has fallen to the Secretary of State for the Home Depart- 
ment. The defects of this mode of appointment are sufficiently 
obvious. Here a great deal certainly depends on the intelligence 
and liberality of the individual Minister, to counteract the natural 
defects of the system. But, even under the best and most im- 
partial Minister, it can accomplish its end only in a very precari- 
ous and unsatisfactory manner. The Minister is transitory ; the 
choice of professors is a function wholly different in kind from the 
ordinary duties of his department ; is not of very frequent recur- 
rence ; and concerns a distant quarter of the empire, where the 
Universities are situated, and the candidates generally found. 

1 [See p. 335, sq. — Even the one, to which the two exceptions are here reduced, is, 
I am sorry to find, hardly valid. For " the Harmony of the Gospels" by Dr. Marhnight 
(and to him I alluded), was, indeed, translated into Latin and printed at Bremen in 
1777 ; but the author, I see, had studied in the great classical school of Leyden. 1 



378 A.CADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

The Minister can not, therefore, be presumed to think of specially 
qualifying himself for this contingent fraction of his duty. He 
must rely on the information of others. But can he obtain im- 
partial information, or be expected to take the trouble necessary 
in seeking it? On the other hand, he will be besieged by the 
solicitations of candidates and their supporters. Testimonials, 
collected by the applicant himself among his friends, and strong 
in proportion to the partialities of the testifier, and the lowness 
of the criterion by which he judges, will be showered in, and 
backed by political and personal recommendations. If he trust 
to such information, he limits his patronage to those who apply 
for the appointment ; and as all certificates of competence are in 
general equally transcendent, he will naturally allow inferior con- 
siderations to incline his preference among candidates all ostensi- 
bly the very best. 

To lift this patronage out of the sphere of political partiality, 
and to secure precise and accurate information from an unbiassed, 
intelligent, and responsible authority, is what every patriotic 
Minister of the Crown would be desirous to effect. But this can 
be best accomplished by organizing a board of Curators (the name 
is nothing) for each University, on the principles of patronage we 
have explained ; whose province would be to discover, to compare, 
to choose, to recommend, and to specify the grounds of their pre- 
ference, to the Minister, with whom the definitive nomination 
would remain — a nomination, however, which could be only form- 
al, if the Curators conscientiously fulfilled the duties of their 
trust. How beneficially these authorities would reciprocally act 
as checks and counter-checks, stimuli and counter-stimuli, is 
apparent. By this arrangement, the Crown would exchange an 
absolute for a modified patronage in those chairs now in its pre- 
sentation ; but this modified patronage would be extended over 
all others. The definitive nomination would certainly be no 
longer of value as a petty mean of ministerial influence ; but the 
dignity of the Crown would thus be far better consulted in making 
it the supreme and general guardian of the good of all the Uni- 
versities. Nor would the system of curatorial boards be super- 
seded, were a separate department of public instruction to be 
established in the administration of the State. On the contrary, 
in most countries where this organization of government pre- 
vails, the University Curators form one of the most useful parts 
of its machinery ; and nothing contributes more to perfect the 



HOW ACADEMICAL CURATORS TO BE HERE APPOINTED. 379 

curatorial system itself, than the consciousness of the Curator 
that his recommendation is always strictly scrutinized by an in- 
telligent and well-informed Ministry, before being carried into 
effect. 

In the present article, we have limited our discussion to the 
general conditions of a good system of academic patronage. We 
do not, therefore, now touch on the difficult and important ques- 
tion — How is a board of academic patrons and governors to be 
best constituted under the ■particular circumstances of this coun- 
try? 1 

1 [As in part supplying an answer to this important question, it may not be im- 
proper here to extract that portion of the Evidence given by me in the course of the 
same year, when examined by " The Commissioners appointed to inquire into the 
state of Municipal Corporations in Scotland." In Appendix III. will be found like- 
wise a relative extract from the General Report of these Commissioners, presented to 
both Houses of Parliament. 

"The best mode of organizing a board of Curatorial Patrons for the University of 
Edinburgh, appears to me the only point of any considerable difficulty ; and this be- 
cause we have here not to deal merely with principles in the abstract, but to determine 
what, under the special circumstances of the case, is the highest point of perfection 
which we can practically realize. 

" But, before stating what, appears to me the most expedient plan of constituting 
such a board, I would premise that a board of Curators, almost any how elected, and 
of only ordinary intelligence and probity, would, if small, and not of a transitory con- 
tinuance in office, be always greatly preferable as academical governors and patrons 
to the passing mob of civic councilors, either under the past or present constitution 
of the city ; because such a body could hardly fail of being more competent to their 
office, from greater average understanding, from their not being disabled for active 
and harmonious measures toward obtaining University teachers of the very highest 
qualifications, and from their standing prominently forward to public view, and con- 
sequently acting under a powerful feeling of responsibility in the exercise of their 
trust. But merely to improve on so vicious a system of patronage as the present 
would be doing very little ; and, though a small board of Curators could not but be 
preferable to the town-council, still the all-important question remains — How is such 
a board, of the highest possible excellence, to be most securely obtained, ? 

"In attempting a feasible solution of this problem, we must accommodate our plan 
to existing circumstances, and construct our building with the materials that lie 
around us. These are certainly not the best possible ; but they seem to me not in- 
adequate to the end in view ; and the difficulty of obtaining better, if such could act- 
ually be obtained, would probably far more than overbalance the superior advantages 
they might otherwise promise. Taking, therefore, the public bodies, such as we find 
them in this city, and employing the principal of these as the means of organizing a 
board of academical Curators, the following appears to me the plan which would 
probably accomplish, to the highest practical perfection, the end in view, i. e. the elec- 
tion of Curators competent to their duty, and actuated by the strongest motives to its 
fulfillment. 

" Let the Curators be elected for a fixed term of years, say seven ; and there may 
either be a general septennial election, or each Curator may continue in office the full 
term, from the actual date of his appointment. Curators to be re-eligible ; it being 
also understood that they ought to be re-elected, if their conduct merit approbation. 

" When a vacancy occurs, a writ to be issued from , requiring each of the six 

following bodies to elect, and their president to return to , as elected by a ma- 
jority of at least two-thirds, a Delegate, qualified (as the writ would bear) by his 



380 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

intelligence, probity, and general liberality, to concur in electing a Curator or Cura- 
tors of the University. These bodies are, 1. The Faculty of Advocates; 2. The 
Society of Writers to the Signet ; 3. The Royal College of Physicians ; 4. The Royal 
College of Surgeons ; 5. The Presbytery of Edinburgh (or, perhaps, under certain 
regulations, the Synod or General Assembly) ; 6. The Town Council. The Delegate 
to be either a member of the constituent body or not, but never its ordinary presiding 
functionary. In the case of the Town Council, the Delegate ought certainly not to 
be a member of that body, and perhaps it would be better if the same rule were even 
extended to the others. On his appointment the Delegate to make a solemn declara- 
tion, before a meeting of his constituents — ' that he has not canvassed for the ap- 
pointment himself, or sanctioned any canvassing by others on his behalf; that he 
feels no sense of obligation to vote for any individual ; and that, in the election, he 
will be solely biassed by his honest conviction that the object of his choice is the per- 
son best qualified to discharge with intelligence, and without personal, political, or 
religious partiality, the functions of Academical Curator.' Should any of the bodies 
fail in returning a Delegate by the requisite majority, the complement of six to be 
supplied by allowing one or other of the remaining bodies, in what order, and under 
what regulations may be deemed expedient, to elect a second Delegate. The Dele- 
gate to be ineligible to an academical chair by the Curators whom he has concurred in 
electing, and perhaps, likewise his sons, sons-in-law, and brothers, or only under cer- 
tain restrictions, as, for instance, only by a unanimous choice of the Curators. 

" The Delegates to report their elections of Curators to the relative Minister of 
State, specifying the votes of each Delegate for each Curator ; and each Delegate 
also to report his own vote to his constituents. If the choice be unanimous, the Min- 
ister bound to confirm the nomination ; but otherwise, it shall be in his power to 
order a new election of Delegates and Curator : but should the same Curator be again 
returned, his appointment to be hereby determined. 

" Ineligible to the curatorial office — peers, the lords president and justice- clerk, pro- 
fessors, clergymen, and practicing medical men ; and not more than two Curators, at 
most, to be elected from the judges of the supreme court. 

" Before entering on their function, an instruction for their conduct in office, ratified 
by his Majesty and Parliament, to be accepted and signed by the Curators. This 
instruction should, inter alia, anxiously prescribe that they are not (as has in this 
country hitherto been the case) merely to bestow the vacant chairs on one of those 
who may happen to come forward as candidates ; but that they are to look carefully 
around for the person of the highest competence, and make to him a tender of the 
appointment, even at the risk of it being declined. They should also make an articu- 
late oath to the upright discharge of their duty, and this in the most impressive form, 
as before the whole Court of Session, specially commissioned for the purpose by the 
King. 

" As formerly stated, the Curators, on each designation of professor, to make a 
detailed report of their choice and its grounds to the Minister, stating whether it 
were unanimous or not, and the names of the majority and minority. If unanimous, 
their designation to necessitate the confirmation ; but if not, then the Minister mav 
remit the matter for reconsideration to the Curators, and even ultimately suspend his 
ratification. On this last event (which is not of probable occurrence), the majority 
of the Curators must, of course, resign ; but if the new Curators, hereupon appointed 
(whether the same individuals be elected or not), repeat the former designation, in 
that case, their choice to be held as final, and the royal confirmation not to be re- 
fused. 

" The reasons of the different parts of this plan are sufficiently obvious. — The 
primary elective bodies, though none of them the best possible, are still sufficiently 
numerous, and sufficiently different, to neutralize any partial interests with which 
they might severally be infected, and each will, consequently, be induced to act only 
for the benefit of the public, in which they themselves always participate. Then, as 
the Delegates are to be chosen by a large majority, no one is likely to be proposed, 
far less to be elected, who does not enjoy the general confidence of the electors apart 
from all considerations of party. — The writ, and its tenor, takes the election of Dele- 



HOW ACADEMICAL CURATORS TO BE HERE APPOINTED. 381 

gate out of the ordinary routine, gives it a certain solemnity, and puts the electors 
on their honor ; while this is still more efficiently done with the Delegates by the 
public declaration they must make on accepting their commission. — The report of 
the Delegates to the Minister and their constituents is useful, by impressing more 
strongly on them the importance of their choice ; by bringing their individual conduct 
before the world, and thus enhancing their consciousness of responsibility. — The 
signature of the instruction, and the solemn oath by the Curators, will tend to keep 
them alive, and, what is even of greater consequence, to keep the public alive to the 
nature and high value of their duties. If the public know what they have a right to 
expect, then trustees will be sure to feel as a necessity what they ought to perform. 
— But every precaution to raise an academical patronage out of the sphere of private 
and party influence is the more anxiously to be taken, as in no other country of Eu- 
rope, both from the relations of our Universities, and the constitution of our govern- 
ment, has merit hitherto obtained so little weight in the choice of professors — in no 
other country is the national conscience in regard to the distribution of public patron- 
age so blunted. To this end the other regulations likewise concur ; — the checks and 
counter-checks of the Minister, Curators, and primary bodies on each other ; and the 
necessity imposed on the Curators of vindicating their choice by an exposition of its 
grounds. The reason of the exclusion of the presidents of the primary bodies from 
the office of Delegate is to prevent the delegation from the risk of falling into routine, 
or being considered as other than a special and most important trust. The exclusion 
of peers, the president, and justice-clerk, &c, from the office of Curator, is to pre- 
vent that honor from being made, or appearing to be made, a sequel to any personal 
or official rank — from being regarded as other than the highest and most unequivocal 
mark of public confidence in the high character and peculiar capacity of the individual 
elected to the situation. 

" Without attempting an ideal perfection by this plan, I am confident a board of 
academical Curators would easily and surely be obtained, who would perform all 
that could reasonably be expected, and determine a golden era in the fortunes of our 
Scottish Universities." 

On reading over the preceding, the scheme now strikes me as too complex, and it 
might, I think, be simplified, without essential detriment, by several omissions. In 
principle, I am however persuaded, it is right, and favor strongly the plan of indirect 
or mediate election ; for it is of great importance, that Curators should be chosen by 
the joint intelligence of a small body, nor feel themselves the nominees, of any par- 
ticular interest or class. However, as indirect election is not generally understood 
in this country, if the elective bodies are precluded from choosing among their own 
members, I have no 3oubt that a fair board of academical appointment and control 
would be obtained ; nay, that one constituted in the simple mode recommended hy 
the Burgh Commissioners would be a marvelous improvement on the present reign 
of ignorance, favor, passion, and caprice. How greatly the University of Edinburgh 
is in want of a good superintendence (to say nothing of a good patronage), is shown 
by the actual state of its Examinations and Degrees. The Senatus Academicus, with 
many individual exceptions, is, as a body, totally incompetent to self-regulation ; and 
even the personal interest of a majority of its numerous members is now opposed to 
the general interests of learning, of the public, and of the University, as an organ of 
education. This is too manifestly shown in the misappropriation also of the funds 
left by General Reid, " to make additions to the Library, or otherwise to promote the 
general interest and advantage of the University, in such way as the Principal and 
Professors shall in their discretion think most fit and proper." This bequest, through 
the preponderance of a special interest, which has grown into command of the Sen- 
atus since the will was made — in opposition to the manifest intention of the testator 
— and in opposition to the most significant warnings both from within and from with- 
out the body, has been diverted, not only to special purposes, but even to the personal 
advantage of a complement of the trustees : — the small majority refusing a prelimin- 
ary inquiry, and not listening to the information offered, in regard to the general 
wants of the University ; overlooking all disapproval by the highest authorities of the 
moral character of the proceedings ; nay, resiling from their own previously professed 



382 ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 

intention of interrogating a Court of Law in regard to the bare legality of any con- 
tested measures. In fact, they are now content to sit, if so allowed, even under the 
judicial stigma incidentally called forth on the way in which the trust has been ad- 
ministered. (Compromise, concession — any thing for non-discussion, may be expected 
forthwith.) Now, had there been a respected board of Curators over the University, 
these proceedings would never even have been attempted ; nor would a protesting 
minority now be compelled to share in the opprobrium of the very acts which they so 
cordially reprobated and so openly disavowed.] 






I7.-0N THE STATE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES, 
WITH MORE ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO OXFORD.* 



(June, 1831.) 

1. — Addenda ad Corpus Statutorum Universitatis Oxoniensis. 
4to. Oxonii: 1825. 

2. — The Oxford University Calendar, for 1829. 8vo. Oxford: 
1829. 

This is the age of reform. — Next in importance to our religious 
and political establishments, are the foundations for public edu- 
cation ; and having now seriously engaged in. a reform of "the 
constitution, the envy of surrounding nations," the time can not 
be distant for a reform in the schools and universities which have 
hardly avoided their contempt. Public intelligence is not, as 
hitherto, tolerant of prescriptive abuses, and the country now 
demands — that endowments for the common weal* should no 
longer be administered for private advantage. At this auspicious 

1 [In Cross's Selections ; translated into German ; and abridged by M. Peisse, &c. 

When this article was written, the history of our oldest universities (Oxford and 
Cambridge) had fallen into oblivion ; their parts and principles were not understood, 
even by themselves ; nay, opinions asserted and universally accepted touching the 
most essential points of their constitution, not only erroneous, but precisely the con- 
verse of truth. The more obvious sources of information did not remedy, when they 
did not countenance, the misapprehensions. Criticism, not compilation, was there- 
fore requisite ; and a correction of the more important errors, avoiding as much as 
possible all second-hand authorities — this a collection of original documents, to say 
nothing of the more authentic histories of universities and academical antiquities, 
which I had succeeded in forming, has enabled me (I hope unostentatiously) to ac- 
complish. The views in this and the subsequent articles, have been followed (often 
silently), without controversy, and almost without hesitation, both in this country 
and abroad ; while even the trifling inaccuracies into which I had inadvertently fallen, 
are faithfully copied by those who would be supposed to look and speak for them- 
selves.] 



384 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

crisis, and under a ministry, no longer warring against general 
opinion, we should be sorry not to contribute our endeavor to at 
tract attention to the defects which more or less pervade all our 
national seminaries of education, and to the means best calculated 
for their removal. We propose, therefore, from time to time, to 
continue to review the state of these establishments, considered 
both absolutely in themselves, and in relation to the other cir- 
cumstances which have contributed to modify the intellectual 
condition of the different divisions of the empire. 

In proceeding to the Universities, we commence with Oxford. 
This University is entitled to precedence, from its venerable anti- 
quity, its ancient fame, the wealth of its endowments, and the 
importance of its privileges : but there is another reason for our 
preference. 

Without attempting any idle and invidious comparison — with- 
out asserting the superior or inferior excellence of Oxford in con- 
trast with any other British University, we have no hesitation 
in affirming, that comparing what it actually is with what it pos- 
sibly could be, Oxford is, of all academical institutions, at once 
the most imperfect and the most perfectible. Properly directed, 
as they might be, the means which it possesses would render it 
the most efficient University in existence ; improperly directed, 
as they are, each part of the apparatus only counteracts another ; 
and there is not a similar institution which, in proportion to what 
it ought to accomplish, accomplishes so little. But it is not in 
demonstrating the imperfection of the present system, that we 
principally ground a hope of its improvement ; it is in demon- 
strating its*illegality. In the reform of an ancient establishment 
like Oxford, the great difficulty is to initiate a movement. In 
comparing Oxford as it is, with an ideal standard, there may be 
differences of opinion in regard to the kind of change expedient, 
if not in regard to the expediency of a change at all ; but, in 
comparing it with the standard of its own code of statutes, there 
can be none. It will not surely be contended that matters should 
continue as they are, if it can be shown that, as now administer- 
ed, this University pretends only to accomplish a petty fraction 
of the ends proposed to it by law, and attempts even this only by 
illegal means. But a progress being determined toward a state 
of right, it is easy to accelerate the momentum toward a state of 
excellence : — apx*! r\p,L<rv Travros. 

Did the limits of a single paper allow us to exhaust the pub- 



UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGES— PRESENT ILLEGALITY. 385 

ject, we should, in the first place, consider the state of the Uni- 
versity, both as established in law, but non-existent in fact, and 
as established in fact, but non-existent in law ; in the second, the 
causes which determined the transition from the statutory to the 
illegal constitution ; in the third, the advantages and disadvant- 
ages of the two systems ; and, in the fourth, the means by which 
the University may be best restored to its efficiency. In the 
present article, we can, however, only compass — and that inade- 
quately—the first and second heads. The third and fourth we 
must reserve for a separate discussion, in which we shall endea- 
vor to demonstrate, that the intrusive system, compared with 
the legitimate, is as absurd as it is unauthorized — that the preli- 
minary step in a reform must be a return to the Statutory Con- 
stitution — and that this constitution, though far from faultless, 
may, by a few natural and easy changes, be improved into an 
instrument of academical education, the most perfect perhaps in 
the world. The subject of our consideration at present requires 
a fuller exposition, not only from its intrinsic importance, but 
because, strange as it may appear, the origin, and consequently 
the cure, of the corruption of the English Universities, is totally 
misunderstood. The vices of the present system have been ob- 
served, and frequently discussed ; but as it has never been shown 
in what manner these vices were generated, so it has never been 
perceived how easily their removal might be enforced. It is 
generally believed that, however imperfect in itself, the actual 
mechanism of education organized in these seminaries, is a time- 
honored and essential part of their being, established upon stat- 
ute, endowed by the national legislature with exclusive privileges^ 
and inviolable as a vested right. We shall prove, on the contra- 
ry, that it is new as it is inexpedient — not only accidental to the 
University, but radically subversive of its constitution — without 
legal sanction, nay, in violation of positive law — arrogating the 
privileges exclusively conceded to another system, which it has 
superseded — and so far from being defensible by those it profits,, 
as a right, that it is a flagrant usurpation, obtained through per- 
jury, and only tolerated from neglect. 

I. Oxford and Cambridge, as establishments for education, 
consist of two parts — of the University proper, and of the Col- 
leges. The former, original and essential, is founded, control- 
led, and privileged by public authority, for the advantage of the 
nation. The latter, accessory and contingent, are created, regu- 

B B 



386 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

lated, and endowed by private munificence, for the interest of 
certain favored individuals. Time was, when the Colleges did 
not exist, and the University was there ; and were the Colleges 
again abolished, the University would remain entire. The for- 
mer, founded solely for education, exists only as it accomplishes 
the end of its institution ; the latter, founded principally for ali- 
ment and habitation, would still exist, were all education aban- 
doned within their walls. The University, as a national estab- 
lishment, is necessarily open to the lieges in general ; the Colleges, 
as private institutions, might universally do, as some have actu- 
ally done — close their gates upon all, except their foundation 
members. 

The Universities and Colleges are thus neither identical, nor 
vicarious of each other If the University ceases to perform its 
functions, it ceases to exist ; and the privileges accorded by the 
nation to the system of public education legally organized in the 

University, can not, without the consent of the nation far less 

without the consent of the academical legislature — be lawfully 
transferred to the system of private education precariously organ- 
ized in the Colleges, and over which neither the State nor the 
University have any control. They have, however, been unlaw- 
fully usurped. 

Through the suspension of the University, and the usurpation 
of its functions and privileges by the Collegial bodies, there has 
arisen the second of two systems, diametrically opposite to each 
other. — The one, in which the University was paramount, is 
ancient and statutory ; the other, in which the Colleges have the 
ascendant, is recent and illegal. — In the former, all was subser- 
vient to public utility, and the interests of science ; in the latter, 
all is sacrificed to private monopoly, and to the convenience of 
the teacher. — The former amplified the means of education in 
accommodation to the mighty end which a University proposes ; 
the latter limits the end which the University attempts to the 
capacity of the petty instruments which the intrusive system 
employs. — The one afforded education in all the Faculties ; the 
other professes to furnish only elementary tuition in the lowest. 
— In the authorized system, the cycle of instruction was distri- 
buted among a body of teachers, all professedly chosen from 
merit, and each concentrating his ability on a single object ; in 
the unauthorized, every branch, necessary to be learned, is monop- 
olized by an individual, privileged to teach all, though probably 



LEGAL SYSTEM— HISTORY OF. 387 

ill qualified to teach any. — The old system daily collected into 
large classes, under the same professor, the whole youth of the 
University of equal standing, and thus rendered possible a keen 
and constant and unremitted competition ; the new, which ele- 
vates the colleges and halls into so many little universities, and 
in these houses distributes the students, without regard to ability 
or standing, among some fifty tutors, frustrates all emulation 
among the members of its small and ill-assorted classes. — In the 
superseded system, the Degrees in all the Faculties were solemn 
testimonials that the graduate had accomplished a regular course 
of study in the public schools of the University, and approved his 
competence by exercise and examination ; and on these degrees, 
only as such testimonials, and solely for the public good, were 
there bestowed by the civil legislature, great and exclusive pri- 
vileges in the church, in the courts of law, and in the practice of 
medicine. In the superseding system, Degrees in allthe Facul- 
ties, except the lowest department of the lowest, certify neither 
a course of academical study, nor any ascertained proficiency in 
the graduate; and these now nominal distinctions retain their 
privileges to the public detriment, and for the benefit only of 
those by whom they have been deprived of their significance.— 
Such is the general contrast of the two systems, which we must 
now exhibit in detail. 

System de Jure.— The Corpus Statutorum by which the Uni- 
versity of Oxford is — we should say, ought to be — governed, was 
digested by a committee appointed for that purpose, through the 
influence of Laud, and solemnly ratified by King, Chancellor, 
and Convocation, in the year 1636. The far greater number of 
those statutes had been previously in force ; and, except in 
certain articles subsequently added, modified, or restricted (con- 
tained in the Appendix), they exclusively determine the law and 
constitution of the University to the present hour. Every mem- 
ber is bound by oath and subscription to their faithful observ- 
ance. — In explanation of the statutory system of instruction, it 
may be proper to say a few words in regard to the history of 
academical teaching, previous to the publication of the Laudian 
Code. 

In the original constitution of Oxford, as in that of all the 
older Universities of the Parisian model, the business of instruc- 
tion was not confided to a special body of privileged professors. 
The University was governed, the University was taught, by the 



388 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

graduates at large. Professor, Master, Doctor, were originally 
synonymous. Every graduate had an equal right of teaching 
publicly in the University the subjects competent to his faculty, 
and to the rank of his degree ; nay, every graduate incurred the 
obligation of teaching publicly, for a certain period, the subjects 
of his faculty, for such was the condition involved in the grant 
of the degree itself. The Bachelor, or imperfect graduate, partly 
as an exercise toward the higher honor, and useful to himself, 
partly as a performance due for the degree obtained, and of ad- 
vantage to others, was bound to read under a master or doctor 
in his faculty, a course of lectures ; and the Master, Doctor, or 
perfect graduate, was, in like manner, after his promotion, obliged 
immediately to commence (incipere), and to continue for a certain 
period publicly to teach (regere), some at least of the subjects 
appertaining to his faculty. As, however, it was only necessary 
for the University to enforce this obligation of public teaching, 
compulsory on all graduates during the term of their necessary 
regency, if there did not come forward a competent number of 
voluntary regents to execute this function 5 and as the schools 
belonging to the several faculties, and in which alone all public 
or ordinary instruction could be delivered, were frequently inad- 
equate to accommodate the multitude of the inceptors ; it came 
to pass, that in these Universities the original period of necessary 
regency was once and again abbreviated, and even a dispensation 
from actual teaching during its continuance, commonly allowed. 1 
At the same time, as the University only accomplished the end 
of its existence through its regents, they alone were allowed to 
enjoy full privileges in its legislation and government; they alone 
partook of its beneficia and sportulse. In Paris, the non-regent 
graduates were only assembled on rare and extraordinary occa- 
sions ; in Oxford, the regents constituted the House of Congrega- 
tion, which, among other exclusive prerogatives, was anciently 
the initiatory assembly, through which it behooved that every 
measure should pass, before it could be submitted to the House 



1 In Oxford, where the public schools of the Faculty of Arts, in School Street, were 
proportionally more numerous (there are known by name above forty sets of schools 
anciently open in that street, i. e. buildings, containing from four to sixteen class- 
rooms) than those in Paris belonging to the different nations of that faculty, in the 
Rue de la Fouarre (Virus Stramineus) — in Oxford this dispensation was more tardily 
allowed. In Paris, the Master who was desirous of exercising this privilege of his 
degree, petitioned his faculty pro regentia ct scholis ; and schools, as they fell vacant, 
were granted to him by his nation, according to his seniority. 



LEGAL SYSTEM— HISTORY OF. 389 

of Convocation, composed indifferently of all regents and non- 
regents resident in the University. 1 

The distinction of regent and non-regent continued most rigid- 
ly marked in the Faculty of Arts — the faculty on which the 
older universities were originally founded, and which was always 
greatly the most numerous. In the other faculties, both in Paris 
and Oxford, all doctors succeeded in usurping the style and priv- 
ileges of regent, though not actually engaged in teaching ; and 
in Oxford, the same was allowed to masters of the Faculty of 
Arts during the statutory period of their necessary regency, even 
when availing themselves of a dispensation from the performance 
of its duties ; and extended to the Heads of Houses (who were 
also in Paris Regens d'honneur), and to College Deans. This 
explains the constitution of the Oxford House of Congregation at 
the present day. 

The ancient system of academical instruction by the graduates 
at large, was, however, still more essentially modified by another 
innovation. The regents were entitled to exact from their audi- 
tors a certain regulated fee (pastus, collecta). To relieve the 
scholars of this burden, and to secure the services of able teach- 
ers, salaries were sometimes given to certain graduates, on consi- 
deration of their delivery of ordinary lectures without collect. 
In many universities, attendance on these courses was specially 
required of those proceeding to a degree ; and it was to the sala- 
ried graduates that the title of Professors, in academical language, 
was at last peculiarly attributed. By this institution of salaried 
lecturers, dispensation could be universally accorded to the other 
graduates. The unsalaried regents found, in general, their 
schools deserted for the gratuitous instruction of the privileged 
lecturers ; and though the right of public teaching competent to 
every graduate still remained entire, its exercise was, in a great 
measure, abandoned to the body of professors organized more or 
less completely in the several faculties throughout the universi- 
ties of Europe. To speak only of Oxford, and in Oxford only of 
the Faculty of Arts : ten salaried Readers or Professors of the 
seven arts and the three philosophies s had been nominated by the 



1 It was only by an abusive fiction that those were subsequently held to be Convio 
tores, or actual residents in the University, who retained their names on the books of 
a Hall, or College. See Corpus Statutorum, tit. x. ^ 1. 

2 The Faculty of Arts originally comprehended, besides the three philosophies, the 
whole seven arts. Of these latter, some were, however, at different times, thrown 



d 90 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

House of Congregation, and attendance on their lectures enforced 
by statute, long prior to the epoch of the Laudian digest. At the 
date of that code, the greater number of these chairs had obtain- 
ed permanent endowments ; and four only depended for a fluctu- 
ating stipend on certain fines and taxes levied on the graduates 
they relieved from teaching, and on the under-graduates they 
were appointed to teach. At that period it was, however, still 
usual for simple graduates to exercise their right of lecturing in 
the public Schools. While this continued, ability possessed an 
opportunity of honorable manifestation ; a nursery of experienced 
teachers was afforded; the salaried readers were not allowed to 
slumber in the quiescence of an uninfringible monopoly ; their 
election could less easily degenerate into a matter of interest and 
favor ; while the student, presented with a more extensive sphere 
of information, was less exposed to form exclusive opinions, when 
hearing the same subjects treated by different lecturers in different 
manners. These advantages have, by such an arrangement, been 
secured in the German universities. 

In Oxford, the Corpus Statutorum introduced little or no 
change in the mechanism of academical instruction ; nor has this 
been done by any subsequent enactment. On the contrary, the 
most recent statutes on the subject — those of 1801 and 1808 — 
recognize the ancient system ratified under Laud, as that still in 
force, and actually in operation. (Corp. Stat. T. iv. Add. p. 129 
-133, p. 190-192.) The scheme thus established in law, though 
now abolished in fact, is as follows : — 

Education is afforded in all the faculties in which degrees are 
granted, by the University itself, through its accredited organs, 
the public readers or professors — a regular attendance on whose 
lectures during a stated period is in every faculty indispensably 
requisite to qualify for a degree. To say nothing of Music, the 



out of the faculty, or separated from the other arts, and special degrees given in 
them, either apart from, or in subordination to, the general degree. Thus, in Oxford 
(as in other of the older Universities), special degrees were given in Grammar, in 
Rhetoric, and in Music. The two former subjects were again withdrawn into the 
faculty, and their degrees waxed obsolete — but Music and its degree still remain 
apart. — The General Sophist was a special degree in Logic, but subordinate to the 
general degree in Arts. — It is needless to say, that these particular degrees gave no 
entry into the academical assemblies. The historians of the universities of Pans 
and Oxford have misconceived this subject, from not illustrating the practice of the 
one school by that of the other. Duboullay and Wood knew nothing of 4 each 
other's works, though writing at the same time, and Crevier never looked beyond 
Duboullay. 



LEGAL SYSTEM— HISTORY OF. 391 

University grants degrees, and furnishes instruction in four facul- 
ties — Arts, Theology, Civil Law, and Medicitie. 1 

In Arts there are established eleven Public Readers or Profes- 
sors ; a regular attendance on whose courses is necessary during 
a period of four years to qualify for Bachelor — during seven, to 
qualify for Master. The student must frequent, during the first 
year, the lectures on Grammar and Rhetoric ; during the second, 
Logic and Moral Philosophy ; during the third and fourth, Logic 
and Moral Philosophy, Geometry and Greek ; during the fifth 
(bachelors of first year), G-eometry, Metaphysics, History, Greek 
— and Hebrew, if destined for the church ; during the sixth and 
seventh, Astronomy, Natural Philosophy, Metaphysics, History, 
Greek — and Hebrew, if intending divines. 

To commence student in the faculty of Theology, a Master- 
ship in Arts is a requisite preliminary. There are two Professors 
of Divinity, on whom attendance is required, during seven years 
for the degree of Bachelor, and subsequently during four for that 
of Doctor. 

In the faculty of Civil Law there is one Professor. The stu- 
dent is not required to have graduated in Arts ; but if a Master 
in that faculty, three years of attendance on the professor qualify 
him for a Bachelor's degree, and four thereafter for a Doctor's. 
The simple student must attend his professor during five years 
for Bachelor, and ten for Doctor ; and previous to commencing 
student in this faculty he must have frequented the courses of 
logic, moral and political philosophy, and of the other humane 
sciences during two years, and history until his presentation for 
Bachelor. By recent statute, to commence the study of law, it 
is necessary to pass the examination for Bachelor of Arts. 

To commence student in Medicine, it is necessary to have ob- 
tained a Mastership in Arts, and thereafter the candidate, (besides 
a certain attendance on the Prselector of Anatomy), must have 
heard the Professor of Medicine during three years for the degree 
of Bachelor, and again during four years for that of Doctor. 2 



1 Since the Reformation, as the subject of the faculty of Canon Law was no longer 
taught, degrees in that faculty were very properly by Royal order discontinued (that 
faculty and its degrees being formally abolished by Henry VIII. in the Universities); 
though the Canon Law has continued still to reign, and the papal abuses to prevail 
in the ecclesiastical courts of justice to the present hour. But why, it may be asked, 
are degrees still suffered to continue in the other faculties, when the relative instruc- 
tion is no longer afforded 1 

2 Of several other chairs subsequently established, we make no mention, as these were 
never constituted into necessary parts of the academical system. 



392 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

The Professors are bound to lecture during term, with excep- 
tion of Lent, i. e. for about six months annually, twice a-week, 
and for two full hours ;' and penalties are incurred by teacher 
and student for any negligence in the performance of their several 
duties. Among other useful regulations, it was here, as in other 
ancient Universities, enjoined, " that after lecture, the Professors 
should tarry for some time in the schools ; and if any scholar or 
auditor may wish to argue against what has been delivered from 
the chair, or may otherwise have any dubiety to resolve, that 
they should listen to him kindly, and satisfy his difficulties and 
doubts." 

But though a body of Professors was thus established as the 
special organ through which the University effected the purposes 
of its institution, the right was not withdrawn, nay, is expressly 
declared to remain inviolate, which every Master and Doctor 
possessed in virtue of his degree, of opening in the public schools 
a course of lectures on any of the subjects within the compass of 
his faculty. (Corp. St. T. iv. h 1.) 

But besides the public and principal means of instruction af- 
forded by the Professors and other Regents in the University, the 
student was subjected until his first degree, or during the first 
four years of his academical life, to the subsidiary and private 
discipline of a Tutor in the Hall or College to which he belonged. 

This regulation was rendered peculiarly expedient by circum- 
stances which no longer exist. Prior to the period of the Laudian 
digest, it was customary to enter the University at a very early 
age ; and the student of those times, when he obtained the rank 
of Master, was frequently not older than the student of the pre- 
sent when he matriculates. It was of course found useful to 
place these academical boys under the special guardianship of a 
tutor during the earlier years of their residence in the University ; 
as it was also expedient to counteract the influence of Popish 
tutors. With this, however, as a merely private concern, the 
University did not interfere ; and we doubt, whether before the 
chancellorship of the puritanical Leicester, any attempt was made 
to regulate by academical authority, the character of those who 
might officiate in this capacity, or before the chancellorship of 
Laud, to render imperative the entering under a tutor at all, 



1 Previously to Laud's statutes, the professors in general were bound to lecture daily X 
and all, if we recollect, at least four times a-week. The change was absurd. It was 
standing which should have been shortened. 



ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND SUPERINTENDENCE. 393 

and a tutor resident in the same house with the pupil. (Com- 
pare "Wood's Annals, a. 1581, and Corp. Stat. T. iii. $ 2.) Be this, 
however, as it may, the tutorial office was viewed as one of very 
subordinate importance in the statutory system. To commence 
tutor, it was only necessary for a student to have the lowest 
degree in arts, and that his learning, his moral and religious 
character, should be approved of by the head of the house in 
which he resided, or, in the event of controversy on this point, by 
the vice-chancellor. All that was expected of him was, " to im- 
bue his pupils with good principles, and institute them in approved 
authors ; but above all, in the rudiments of religion, and the doc- 
trine of the Thirty-nine Articles ; and that he should do all that 
in him lay to render them conformable to the Church of England." 
"It is also his duty to contain his pupils within statutory regu- 
lations in matters of external appearance, such as their clothes, 
boots, and hair ; which, if the pupils are found to transgress, the 
tutor for the first, second, and third offense, shall forfeit six and 
eightpence, and for the fourth, shall be interdicted from his tuto- 
rial function by the vice-chancellor." (T. iii. k 2.) — Who could 
have anticipated from this statute what the tutor was ultimately 
to become ? 

The preceding outline is sufficient to show that by statute the 
University of Oxford proposes an end not less comprehensive than 
other universities, and attempts to accomplish that end by the 
same machinery which they employ. It proposes as its ade- 
quate end, the education of youth in the four faculties of arts, 
theology, law, and medicine ; and for accomplishment of this, a 
body of public lecturers constitute the instrument which it prin- 
cipally, if not exclusively, employs. But as the University of 
Oxford only executes its purpose, and therefore only realizes its 
existence, through the agency of its professorial system ; conse- 
quently, whatever limits, weakens, or destroys the efficiency of 
that system, limits, weakens, and destroys the university itself. 
With the qualities of this system, as organized in Oxford, we have 
at present no concern. We may, however, observe, that if not 
perfect, it was perfectible ; and at the date of its establishment, 
there were few universities in Europe which could boast of an 
organization of its public instructors more complete, and none 
perhaps in which that organization was so easily susceptible of so 
high an improvement. 

In the system de facto all is changed. The University is in 



394 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

abeyance ; — " Stat magni nominis umbra.'''' In none of the 
faculties is it supposed that the Professors any longer furnish the 
instruction necessary for a degree. Some chairs are even nomi- 
nally extinct where an endowment has not perpetuated the sine- 
cure ; and the others betray, in general, their existence only 
through the Calendar. If the silence of " the schools" be occa- 
sionally broken by a formal lecture, or if on some popular sub- 
jects (fees being now permitted) a short course be usually deliv- 
ered ; attendance on these is not more required or expected, than 
attendance in the music-room. For every degree in every faculty 
above Bachelor of Arts, standing on the College books, is allowed 
to count for residence in the University, and attendance on the 
public courses ; and though, under these circumstances, exami- 
nations be more imperatively necessary, an examination only 
exists for the elementary degree, of which residence is also a con- 
dition. 

It is thus not even pretended that Oxford now supplies more 
than the preliminary of an academical education. Even this is 
not afforded by the University, but abandoned to the Colleges and 
Halls ; and the Academy of Oxford is therefore not one public 
University, but merely a collection of private schools. The Uni- 
versity, in fact, exists only in semblance, for the behoof of the 
unauthorized seminaries by which it has been replaced, and which 
have contrived, under covert of its name, to slip into possession 
of its public privileges. 1 

1 How completely the University is annihilated — how completely even all memory of 
its history, all knowledge of its constitution, have perished in Oxford, is significantly 
shown in the following passage, written not many years ago by a very able defender 
of things as they now are in that seminary. " There are, moreover," says Bishop 
Copplestone, " some points in the constitution of this place, which are carefully kept 
out of sight by our revilers, but which ought to be known and well considered, before 
any comparison is made between what we are, and what we ought to be. The Uni- 
versity of Oxford is not a National Foundation. It is a. congeries of foundations, 
originating some in royal munificence, but more in private piety and bounty. They 
are moulded indeed into one corporation ; but each one of our twenty Colleges is a cor- 
poration by itself, and has its own peculiar statutes, not only regulating its internal 
affairs, but confining its benefits by a great variety of limitations." {Reply to the 
Calumnies of the Edinburgh Reviciv, p. 183). In refutation of this uncontradicted 
assertion, which is not simply wrong, but diametrically opposed to the truth, we shall 
content ourselves with merely quoting a sentence from the "Abstract of divers Privi- 
leges and Rights of the University of Oxford,''' by the celebrated Dr. Wallis, the least 
of whose merits was an intimate acquaintance with the history and constitution of the 
establishment of which he was Registrar. " The rights or privileges (whatever they 
be) [are] not granted or belonging to Scholars as living in Colleges, <fyc. but to College* 
&c, as houses inhabited by Scholars, the Colleges which we now have being accidental 
to the corporation of the University, and the confining of Scholars now to a certain num- 
ber of Colleges and Halls being extrinsical to the University, and by a lo,w of their own 



SYSTEM DE FACTO— FELLOW-TUTORS. 395 

But as academical education was usurped by the Tutors from 
the Professors — so all tutorial education was usurped by the Fel- 
lows from the other graduates. The fellows exclusively teach all 
that Oxford now deems necessary to be taught ; and as every 
tutor is singly vicarious of the whole ancient body of professors, 
— avrjp ttoW&v avTCL^Lo? aXkwv — the present capacity of the Uni- 
versity to effect the purposes of its establishment must, conse- 
quently, be determined by the capacity of each felloiv-tutor to 
compass the cyclopcedia of academical instruction. If Oxford 
accomplishes the ends of a University even in its lowest faculty, 
every fellow-tutor must be a second " Doctor Universalis" 

" Qui tria, qui septem, qui totum scibile scivit." 

But while thus resting her success on the most extraordinary 
ability of her teachers, we shall see that she makes no provision 
even for their most ordinary competence. 

As the fellowships were not founded for the purposes of teach- 
ing, so the qualifications that constitute a fellow are not those 
that constitute an instructor. The Colleges owe their establish- 
ment to the capricious bounty of individuals ; and the fellow 
rarely owes his eligibility to merit alone, but in the immense 
majority of cases to fortuitous circumstances. 1 The fellowships 
in Oxford are, with few exceptions, limited to founder's kin — to 
founder's kin, born in particular counties, or educated at particu- 
lar schools — to the scholars of certain schools, without restriction, 
or narrowed by some additional circumstance of age or locality 
of birth — to the natives of certain dioceses, archdeaconries, isl- 



making, each College (but not the Halls) being a distinct corporation from that of the 
University." 

1 This is candidly acknowledged by the intelligent apologist just quoted. " In most 
Colleges the fellowships are appropriated to certain schools, dioceses, counties, and in 
some cases even to parishes, with a preference given to the founder's kindred forever. 
Many qualifications, quite foreign to intellectual talents and learning, are thus en- 
joined by the founders ; and in very few instances is a free choice of candidates 
allowed to the fellows of a College, upon any vacancy in their number. Merit there- 
fore has not such provision made as the extent of the endowments might seem to 
promise. Now it is certain that each of these various institutions is not the best. 
The best of them perhaps are those [in only two Colleges] where an unrestrained 
choice is left among all candidates who have taken one degree. The worst are those 
which are appropriated to schools, from which boys of sixteen or seventeen are for- 
warded to a fixed station and emolument, which nothing can forfeit but flagrant mis- 
conduct, and which no exertion can render more valuable." (.Reply to the Calumnies, 
&c. p. 183.) We may add, that even where " a free choice of candidates is allowed," 
the electors are not always animated by the spirit which has latterly prevailed in the 
Colleges — of Balliol and Oriel, Oxford, of Trinity, Cambridge. • 



396 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

ands, counties, towns, parishes, or manors, under every variety 
of arbitrary condition. In some cases, the candidate must be a 
graduate of a certain standing, in others he must not ; in some 
he must be in orders, perhaps priest's, in others he is only bound 
to enter the church within a definite time. In some cases, the 
fellow may freely choose his profession ; in general he is limited 
to theology, and in a few instances must proceed, in law or medi- 
cine. The nomination is sometimes committed to an individual, 
sometimes to a body of men, and these either within or without 
the College and University ; but in general it belongs to the fel- 
lows. The elective power is rarely, however, deposited in worthy 
hands ; and even when circumstances permit any liberty of choice, 
desert has too seldom a chance in competition with favor. With 
one unimportant exception, the fellowships are perpetual ; but 
they are vacated by marriage, and by acceptance of a living in 
the Church above a limited amount. They vary greatly in emol- 
ument in different Colleges ; and in the same Colleges the differ- 
ence is often considerable between those on different foundations, 
and on the same foundations between the senior and the junior 
fellowships. Some do not even afford the necessaries of life ; 
others are more than competent to its superfluities. Residence 
is now universally dispensed with ; though in some cases certain 
advantages are only to be enjoyed on the spot. In the Church, 
the Colleges possess considerable patronage ; the livings as they 
fall vacant are at the option of the fellows in the order of senior- 
ity ; and the advantage of a fellowship depends often less on the 
amount of salary which it immediately affords, than on the value 
of the preferment to which it may ultimately lead. 

But while, as a body, the fellows can thus hardly be supposed 
to rise above the vulgar average of intelligence and acquire- 
ment: so, of the fellows, it is not those best competent to its 
discharge who are generally found engaged in the business of 
tuition. 

In the first place, there is no power of adequate selection, were 
there even sufficient materials from which to choose. The head, 
himself, of the same leaven with the fellows, can not be presumed 
greatly to transcend their level ; and he is peculiarly exposed to 
the influence of that party spirit by which collegial bodies are so 
frequently distracted. Were his approbation of tutors, therefore, 
free, we could have no security for the wisdom and impartiality 
of his choice. But in point of fact he can only legally refuse his 



SYSTEM DE FACTO— FELLOW-TUTORS. 397 

sanction on the odious grounds of ignorance, vice, or irreligion. 
The tutors are thus virtually self-appointed. 

But in the second place, a fellow constitutes himself a tutor, 
not because he suits the office, but because the office is conve- 
nient to him. The standard of tutorial capacity and of tutorial 
performance is in Oxford too low to frighten even the diffident 
or lazy. The advantages of the situation in point either of profit 
or reputation, are not sufficient to tempt ambitious talent ; and 
distinguished ability is sure soon to be withdrawn from the voca- 
tion—if marriage does not precipitate a retreat. 1 The fellow who 
in general undertakes the office, and continues the longest to dis- 
charge it, is a clerical expectant whose hopes are bounded by a 
College living ; and who, until the wheel of promotion has moved 
round, is content to relieve the tedium of a leisure life by the 
interest of an occupation, and to improve his income by its emol- 
uments. Thus it is that tuition is not solemnly engaged in as 
an important, arduous, responsible, and permanent occupation ; 
but lightly viewed and undertaken as a matter of convenience, a 
business by the by, a state of transition, a stepping-stone to some- 
thing else \ in a word, as a pass-time. 

But in the third place, were the tutors not the creatures of 
accident, did merit exclusively determine their appointment, and 
did the situation tempt the services of the highest talent, still it 
would be impossible to find a complement of able men equal in 
number to the cloud of tutors whom Oxford actually employs. 

This general demonstration of what the fellow-tutors of Oxford 
must be, is more than confirmed by a. view of what they actually 
are. — It is not contended that the system excludes men of merit, 
but that merit is in general the accident, not the principle, of 
their appointment. We might, therefore, always expect, on the 
common doctrine of probabilities, that among the multitude of 
college tutors, there should be a few known to the world for 
ability and erudition. But we assert, without fear of contradic- 
tion, that, on the average, there is to be found among 1 those to 
whom Oxford confides the business of education, an infinitely 
smaller proportion of men of literary reputation, than among the 

1 " So far from a College being a drain upon the world, the world drains Colleges 
of their most efficient members ; and although the University thus becomes a more ef- 
fectual engine of education [ ! how 1] it loses much of that characteristic feature it once 
had, as a residence of learned leisure, and an emporium of literature." — Reply to the 
Calumnies, <fc. p. 185. — [Adam Smith, who was himself of Oxford, has some good 
observationsupon this rapid drainage and its effect in sinking the University.] 



398 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

actual instructors of any other University in the world. For 
example : the second work at the head of this article exhibits the 
names of above forty fellow-tutors ; yet among these we have 
not encountered a single individual of whose literary existence 
the public is aware. This may be an unfavorable accident ; but 
where is the University, out of Britain, of which so little could 
at any time be said of its instructors ? 

"We at present consider the system de facto in itself, and with- 
out reference to its effects ; and say nothing of its qualities, except 
in so far as these are involved in the bare statement of its organ- 
ization. So much, however, is notorious ; either the great Uni- 
versity of Oxford does not noiv attempt to accomplish what it was 
established to effect, and what every, even the meanest, Univer- 
sity proposes ; or it attempts this by means inversely proportioned 
to the end, and thus ludicrously fails in the endeavor. That there 
is much of good, much worthy of imitation by other Universities, 
in the present spirit and present economy of Oxford, we are 
happy to acknowledge, and may at another time endeavor to 
demonstrate. But this good is occasioned, not effected; it exists, 
not in consequence of any excellence in the instructors — and is 
only favored in so far as it is compatible with the interest of 
those private corporations who administer the University exclu- 
sively for their own benefit. As at present organized, it is a 
doubtful problem whether the tutorial system ought not to be 
abated as a nuisance. For if some tutors may afford assistance 
to some pupils, to other pupils other tutors prove equally an im- 
pediment. We are no enemies of collegial residence, no enemies 
of a tutorial discipline, even now when its' former necessity has 
in a great measure been superseded. To vindicate its utility 
under present circumstances, it must, however, be raised not 
merely from its actual corruption, but even to a higher excel- 
lence than it possessed by its original constitution. A tutorial 
system in subordination to a professorial (which Oxford formerly 
enjoyed) we regard as affording the condition of an absolutely 
perfect University. But the tutorial system as now dominant in 
Oxford, is vicious : 1°, in its application — as usurping the place 
of the professorial, whose function, under any circumstances, it 
is inadequate to discharge ; 2°, in its constitution — the tutors as 
now fortuitously appointed, being, as a body, incompetent even 
to the duties of subsidiary instruction. 

IT. We come now to our second subject of consideration : — To 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 399 

inquire by what causes and for what ends this revolution was 
accomplished ; how the English Universities, and in particular 
Oxford, passed from a legal to an illegal state, and from public 
Universities were degraded into private schools ?- — The answer is 
precise : This was effected solely by the influence, and exclusively 
for the advantage, of the Colleges. But it requires some illus- 
tration to understand, how the interest of these private corpora- 
tions was opposed to that of the public institution, of which they 
were the accidents ; and how their domestic tuition was able 
gradually to undermine, and ultimately to supersede, the system 
of academical lectures in aid of which it was established. 

Though Colleges be unessential accessories to a University, 
yet common circumstances occasioned, throughout all the older 
Universities, the foundation of conventual establishments for the 
habitation, support, and subsidiary discipline of the student ; and 
the date of the earliest Colleges is not long posterior to the date 
of the most ancient Universities. Establishments of this nature 
are thus not peculiar to England ; and like the greater number 
of her institutions, they were borrowed by Oxford from the mother 
University of Paris — but with peculiar and important modifica- 
tions. A sketch of the Collegial system as variously organized, 
and as variously affecting the academical constitution in foreign 
Universities, will afford a clearer conception of the distinctive 
character of that system in those of England, and of the para- 
mount and unexampled influence it has exerted in determining 
their corruption. 

The causes which originally promoted the establishment of 
Colleges, were very different from those which subsequently occa- 
sioned their increase, and are to be found in the circumstances 
under which the earliest Universities sprang up. The great con- 
course of the studious, counted by tens of thousands, and from 
every country of Europe, to the illustrious teachers of Law, 
Medicine, and Philosophy, who in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
turies delivered their prelections in Bologna, Salerno, and Paris, 
necessarily occasioned, in these cities, a scarcity of lodgings, and 
an exorbitant demand for rent. Various means were adopted to 
alleviate this inconvenience, but with inadequate effect ; and the 
hardships to which the poorer students were frequently exposed, 
moved compassionate individuals to provide houses, in which a 
certain number of indigent scholars might be accommodated with 
free lodging during the progress of their studies. The manners, 



400 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

also, of the cities in which the early Universities arose, were, for 
obvious reasons, more than usually corrupt ; and even attendance 
on the public teachers forced the student into dangerous and 
degrading associations.' Piety thus concurred with benevolence, 
in supplying houses in which poor scholars might be harbored 
without cost, and youth, removed from perilous temptation, be 
placed under the control of an overseer ; and an example was 
afforded for imitation in the Hospitia which the religious orders 
established in the University towns for those of their members 
who were now attracted, as teachers and learners, to these places 
of literary resort." Free board was soon added to free lodging ; 
and a small bursary or stipend generally completed the endow- 
ment. With moral superintendence was conjoined literary disci- 
pline, but still in subservience to the public exercises and lec- 
tures : opportunity was thus obtained of constant disputation to 
ivhich the greatest importance was wisely attributed, through all 
the scholastic ages ; while books, which only affluent individuals 
could then afford to purchase, were supplied for the general use 
of the indigent community. 

But as Paris was the University in which collegial establish- 
ments were first founded, so Paris was the University in which 
they soonest obtained the last and most important extension of 
their purposes. Regents were occasionally taken from the public 
schools, and placed as regular lecturers within the Colleges. 
Sometimes nominated, always controlled, and only degraded by 
their Faculty, these lecturers were recognized as among its regu- 
lar teachers ; and the same privileges accorded to the attendance 

1 "Tunc autem," says the Cardinal de Vitry, who wrote in the first half of the 
thirteenth century, in speaking of the state of Paris — " tunc autem arnplius in Clero 
quam in alio populo dissoluta (Lutetia sc), tamquam capra scabiosa et ovis morbida, 
pernicioso excmplo multos hospites suos undique ad cam afflucntes corrumpebat, ha- 
bitatores suos devorans et in profundum demergens, simplicem fornicationem nullum 
peccatum reputabat. Meretrices publics, ubique pervicos et plateas civitatis, passim 
ad lupanaria sua clericos transeuntes quasi per violentiam percrahebant. Quod si 
forte ingredi recusarent, confestim eos ' Sodomitas,'' post ipsos conclamentes, dicebant. 
In una autem ut eadem domo, scholce erant superius, prostibula inferius. In parte su- 
periori magistri legebant, in inferiori meretrices officia turpitudinis exercebant. Ex una 
parte, meretrices inter se et cum Cenonibus [lenonibus] litigabant ; ex alia parte, disjm- 
tantes ct eontentiose agentes clerici proclamabant." — (Jacobi de Vitriaco Hist. Occident, 
cap. vii.) — It thus appears, that the Schools of the Faculty of Arts were not as yet 
established in the Rue de la Fouarrc. At this date in Paris, as originally also in Ox 
ford, the lectures and disputations were conducted by the masters in their private 
habitations. 

3 [In Italy the Colleges seem never to have gone beyond this. See Facciolati Syn- 
tagma x.] 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 401 

on their College courses, as to those delivered by other gradu- 
ates in the common schools of the University. Different Colleges 
thus afforded the means of academical education in certain de- 
partments of a faculty— in a whole faculty — or in several facul- 
ties ; and so far they constituted particular incorporations of 
teachers and learners, apart from, and, in some degree, independ- 
ent of, the general body of the University. They formed, in 
fact, so many petty Universities, or so many fragments of a Uni- 
versity. Into the Colleges, thus furnished with professors, there 
were soon admitted to board and education pensioners, or schol- 
ars, not on the foundation ; and nothing more was wanting to 
supersede the lecturer in the public schools, than to throw open 
these domestic classes to the members of the other Colleges, and 
to the martinets or scholars of the University not belonging to 
Colleges at all. In the course of the fifteenth century this was 
done; and the University and Colleges were thus intimately 
united. The College Regents, selected for talent, and recom- 
mended to favor by their nomination, soon diverted the students 
from the unguaranteed courses of the lecturers in the University 
schools. The prime faculties of Theology and Arts became at 
last exclusively collegial. With the exception of two courses in 
the great College of Navarre, the lectures, disputations, and 
acts of the Theological Faculty were confined to the college of 
the Sorbonne; and the Sorbonne thus became convertible with 
the Theological Faculty of Paris. During the latter half of the 
fifteenth century, the "famous Colleg.es," or those "of complete 
exercise" (cc. magna, celebria, famosa, famata, de plein exercise), 
in the Faculty of Arts, amounted to eighteen — a number which, 
before the middle of the seventeenth, had been reduced to ten. 
About eighty others (cc. parva, non celebria), of which above a 
half still subsisted in the eighteenth century, taught either only 
the subordinate branches of the faculty (grammar and rhetoric), 
and this only to those on the foundation, or merely afforded habi- 
tation and stipend to their bursars, now admitted to education in 
all the larger colleges, with the illustrious exception of Navarre. 
The Rue de la Fouarre (vicus straminens), which contained the 
schools belonging to the different Nations of the Faculty, and to 
which the lectures in philosophy had been once exclusively con- 
fined, became less and less frequented ; until at last the public 
chair of Ethics, long perpetuated by an endowment, alone remain- 
ed ; and " The Street" would have been wholly abandoned by 

Cc 



*02 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

the tiniversity, had not the acts of Determination, the forms of 
Inceptorship, and the Examinations of some of the Nations, still 
connected the Faculty of Arts with this venerable site. The 
colleges of full exercise in this faculty, continued to combine the 
objects of a classical school and university : for, besides the art 
of grammar taught in six or seven consecutive classes of human- 
ity or ancient literature, they supplied courses of rhetoric, logic, 
metaphysics, physics, mathematics, and morals; the several sub- 
jects, taught by different professors. A free competition was 
thus maintained between the Colleges ; the principals had every 
inducement to appoint only the most able teachers; and the 
emoluments of the rival professors (who were not astricted to 
celibacy) depended mainly on their fees. A blind munificence 
quenched this useful emulation. In the year 1719, fixed salaries 
and retiring pensions were assigned by the crown to the College 
Regents ; the lieges at large now obtained the gratuitous instruc- 
tion which the poor had always enjoyed, but the University grad- 
ually declined. 

After Paris, no continental University was more affected in its 
fundamental faculty by the collegial system than Louvain. Ori- 
ginally, as in Paris, and the other Universities of the Parisian 
model, the lectures in the Faculty of Arts were exclusively deliv- 
ered by the regents in vico, or in the general schools, to each of 
whom a certain subject of philosophy, and a certain hour of teach- 
ing, was assigned. Colleges were founded ; and in some of these, 
during the fifteenth century, particular schools were established. 
The regents in these colleges were not disowned by the faculty, 
to whose control they were subjected. Here, as in Paris, the 
lectures by the regents in vico gradually declined, till at last the 
three public professorships of Ethics, Rhetoric, and Mathematics, 
perpetuated by endowment, were in the seventeenth century the 
only classes that remained open in the halls of the Faculty of 
Arts, in which, besides other exercises, the Quodlibetic Disputa- 
tions were still annually performed. The general tuition of that 
faculty was conducted m four rival colleges of full exercise, or 
Pcsdagogia, as they were denominated, in contradistinction to 
the other colleges, which were intended less for the education, 
than for the habitation and aliment of youth, during their studies. 
These last, which amounted to above thirty, sent their bursars for 
educaticn to the four privileged Colleges of the Faculty; to ono 
or other of which these minor establishments were in general 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 403 

astricted. In the Psedagogia (with the single exception of the 
Collegium Porci), Philosophy alone was taught, and this under 
the fourfold division of Logic, Physics, Metaphysics, and Morals, 
by four ordinary professors and a principal. Instruction in the 
Litteras Humaniores, was, in the seventeenth century, discontin- 
ued in the other three (cc. Castri, Lilii, Falconis) ;■ — the earlier 
institution in this department being afforded by the oppidan 
schools then every where established ; the higher by the Colle- 
gium Gandense ; and the highest by the three professors of 
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew literature, in the Collegium Tri- 
lingue, founded in 1517, by Hieronymus Buslidius— a memora- 
ble institution, imitated by Francis I. in Paris, by Fox and "Wolsey 
in Oxford, and hy Ximenes in Alcala de Henares. In the Pseda- 
gogia the discipline was rigorous ; the diligence of the teachers 
admirably sustained by the rivalry of the different Houses ; and 
the emulation of the students, roused by daily competition in 
their several classes and colleges, was powerfully directed toward 
the great general contest, in which all the candidates for a degree 
in arts from the different Psedagogia were brought into concourse 
— publicly and minutely tried by sworn examinators— and finally 
arranged with rigorous impartiality in the strict order of merit. 
This competition for academical honors, long the peculiar glory 
of Louvain, is only to be paralleled by the present examinations 
in the English Universities ; ' we may explain the former when 
we come to speak of the latter. — [See Reid's Works, p. 721 sq.| 
In Germany collegial establishments did not obtain the same 
preponderance as in the Netherlands and France. In the older 
universities of the empire, the academical system was not essen- 
tially modified by these institutions : and in the universities 
founded after the commencement of the sixteenth century, they 
were rarely called into existence. In Prague, Vienna, Heidelberg, 
Cologne, Erfurth, Leipsic, Rostoch, Ingolstadt, Tubingen, &c, 
we find conventual establishments for the habitation, aliment, 
and superintendence of youth ; but these, always subsidiary to 
the public system, were rarely able, after the revival of letters, 
to maintain their importance even in this subordinate capacity. 
In Germany, the name of College was usually applied to 

1 We suspect that the present Cambridge scheme of examination and honors was 
a direct imitation of that of Louvain. The similarity in certain points seems too pre- 
cise to be accidental. The deplorable limitation of the former, is of course quite 
original. — [See Appendix hi.] [The previous suspicion is, I am now convinced, 
unfounded. — Author's Addend, to Eng. Ed.] 



404 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

foundations destined principally for the residence and support of 
the academical teachers ; the name of Bursa was given to houses 
inhabited by students, under the superintendence of a graduate 
in arts. In the colleges, which were comparatively rare, if schol- 
ars were admitted at all, they received free lodging or free board, 
but not free domestic tuition ; they were bound to be diligent in 
attendance on the lectures of the public readers in the University ; 
and the governors of the house were enjoined to see that this 
obligation was faithfully performed. The Bursee, which corre- 
sponded to the ancient Halls of Oxford and Cambridge, prevailed 
in all the older Universities of G-ermany. They were either 
benevolent foundations for the reception of a certain class of 
favored students, who had sometimes also a small exhibition for 
their support (bb. privates) : or houses licensed by the Faculty of 
Arts, to whom they exclusively belonged, in which the students 
admitted were bound to a certain stated contribution (positio) to 
a common exchequer [bursa — hence the name), and to obedience 
to the laws by which the discipline of the establishment was reg- 
ulated (bb. communes). Of these varieties, the second was in 
general engrafted on the first. Every bursa was governed by a 
graduate (rector conventor ;) and in the larger institutions, under 
him, by his delegate (conrector) or assistants (magistri conven- 
tores). In most Universities it was enjoined that every regular 
student in the Faculty of Arts should enrol himself of a burse ; 
hut the burse was also frequently inhabited by masters engaged 
in public lecturing in their own, or in following the courses of a 
higher faculty. To the duty of Rector belonged a general super- 
intendence of the diligence and moral conduct of the inferior 
members, and (in the larger bursse, with the aid of a procurator 
or ccconomus) the management of the funds destined for the main- 
tenance of the house. As in the colleges of France and England, 
he could enforce discipline by the infliction of corporeal punish- 
ment. Domestic instruction was generally introduced into these 
establishments, but, as we said, only in subservience to the pub- 
lic. The rector, either by himself or deputies, repeated with his 
bursars their public lessons, resolved difficulties they might pro- 
pose, supplied deficiencies in their knowledge, and moderated at 
the performance of their private disputations. 

The philosophical controversies which, during the Middle Ages, 
divided the universities of Europe into hostile parties, were waged 
with peculiar activity among a people, like the Grermans, actu- 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 405 

ated, more than any other, by speculative opinion, and the spirit 
of sect. The famous question touching the nature of Universals, 
which created a schism in the University of Prague, and thus 
founded the University of Leipsic ; which formally separated 
into two, the faculty of arts (called severally the via antiqua or 
realist, and the via moderna or nominalist), in Ingolstadt, Tu- 
bingen, Heidelberg, &c. ; and occasioned a ceaseless warfare in 
the other schools of philosophy throughout the empire : — this 
question modified the Grerman bursas in a far more decisive man- 
ner than it affected the colleges in the other countries of Europe. 
The Nominalists and Realists withdrew themselves into different 
bursae ; whence, as from opposite castles, they daily descended 
to renew their clamorous, and not always bloodless contests, in 
the arena of the public schools. In this manner the bursas of 
Ingolstadt, Tubingen, Heidelberg, Erfurth, and other universities, 
were divided between the partisans of the Via Antiquorum, and 
the partisans of the Via Modernorum ; and in some of the greater 
schools the several sects of Realism — as the Albertists, Thomists, 
Scotists— had bursas of their "peculiar process P — [Thus in Co-, 
logne.] 

The effect of this was to place these institutions more abso- 
lutely under that scholastic influence which swayed the faculties 
of arts and theology ; and however adverse were the different 
sects, when a common enemy was at a distance, no sooner was 
the reign of scholasticism threatened by the revival of polite let- 
ters, than their particular dissensions were merged in a general 
syncretism to resist the novelty equally obnoxious to all — a re- 
sistance which, if it did not succeed in obtaining the absolute 
proscription of humane literature in the Universities, succeeded, 
at least, in excluding it from the course prescribed for the degree 
in arts, and from the studies authorized in the bursas, of which 
that faculty had universally the control. 1 In their relations to 
the revival of ancient learning, the bursas of Grermany, and the 
colleges of France and England, were directly opposed ; and to 
this contrast is, in part, to be attributed the difference of their 
fate. The colleges, indeed, mainly owed their stability — in En- 
gland to their wealth — in France to their coalition with the Uni- 
versity. But in harboring the rising literature, and rendering 
themselves instrumental to its progress, the colleges seemed 

t l See the article on the Epistolm Obscurorum Virorum.'] 



106 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

anew to vindicate their utility, and remained, during the revolu- 
tionary crisis at lea\st, in unison with the spirit of the age. The 
bursa, on the contrary, fell at once into contempt with the anti- 
quated learning which they so fondly defended ; and before they 
were disposed to transfer their allegiance to the dominant litera- 
ture, other instruments had been organized, and circumstances 
had superseded their necessity. The philosophical faculty to 
which they belonged, had lost, by its opposition to the admission 
of humane letters into its course, the consideration it formerly 
obtained; and in the Protestant Universities of the Empire a 
degree in Arts was no longer required as a necessary passport to 
the other faculties. The Gymnasia, established or multiplied on 
the Reformation throughout Protestant Grermany, sent the youth 
to the universities with sounder studies, and at a maturer age ; 
and the public prelections, no longer intrusted to the fortuitous 
competence of the graduates, were discharged, in chief, by Pro- 
fessors carefully selected for their merit — rewarded in exact pro- 
portion to their individual value in the literary market — and 
stimulated to exertion by a competition unexampled in the aca- 
demical arrangements of any other country. The discipline of 
the bursse was now found less useful in aid of the University; 
and the student less disposed to submit to their restraint. No 
wealthy foundations perpetuated their existence independently of 
use ; and their services being found too small to warrant their 
maintenance by compulsory regulations, they were soon generally 
abandoned. — [The name Bursch (student) alone survives.] 

In the English Universities, the history of the collegial element 
has been very different. Nowhere did it deserve to exercise so 
small an influence; nowhere has it exercised so great. The col- 
leges of the continental Universities were no hospitals for drones ; 
their foundations were exclusively in favor of teachers and learn- 
ers ; the former, whose number was determined by their necessity, 
enjoyed their stipend under the condition of instruction ; and the 
latter, only during the period of their academical studies. In the 
English colleges, on the contrary, the fellowships, with hardly an 
exception, are perpetual, not burdened with tuition, and indefinite 
in number. In the foreign colleges, the instructors were chosen 
from competence. In those of England, but especially in Oxford, 
the fellows in general owe their election to chance. Abroad, as 
the colleges were visited, superintended, regulated, and reformed 
by their faculty, their lectures were acknowledged by the Univer- 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 40? 

sity as public courses, and the lecturers themselves at last recog- 
nized as its privileged professors. In England, as the University 
did not exercise the right of visitation over the colleges, their 
discipline was viewed as private and subsidiary; while the fellow 
was never recognized as a public character at all, far less as a 
privileged instructor. In Paris and Louvain, the college discipline 
superseded only the precarious lectures of the graduates at large. 1 
In Oxford and Cambridge, it was an improved and improvable 
system of professorial education that the tutorial extinguished. 
In the foreign Universities, the right of academical instruction 
was deputed to a limited number of " famous colleges," and in 
these only to a full body of co-operative teachers. In Oxford, all 
academical education is usurped, not only by every house, but by 
every fellow-tutor it contains. The alliance between the Colleges 
and University in Paris and Louvain was, in the circumstances, 
perhaps a rational improvement ; the dethronement of the Uni- 
versity by the Colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, without doubt, 
a preposterous, as an illegal, revolution. 

It was the very 'peculiarity in the constitution of the English 
colleges which disqualified them, above all similar incorporations, 
even for the lower offices of academical instruction, that enabled 
them in the end to engross the very highest; and it only requires 
an acquaintance with the history of the two Universities, to 
explain how a revolution so improbable in itself, and so disas- 
trous in its effects, was by the accident of circumstances, and 
the influence of private interest, accomplished. " Reduce," says 
Bacon, " things to their first institution, and observe how they 
have degenerated." This explanation, limited to Oxford, will be 
given by showing: — 1°, How the students, once distributed in 
numerous small societies through the halls, were at length col- 
lected into a few large communities within the colleges ; 2°, How 
in the colleges, thus the penfolds of the academical flock, the 



1 In Paris (1562) the celebrated Ramus proposed a judicious plan of reform for the 
Faculty of Arts. He disapproved of the lectures on philosophy established in the 
colleges ; and was desirous of restoring these to the footing of the public courses de 
livered for so many centuries in the Rue de la Fouarre, and only suspended a few 
years previously. He proposed, that eight accredited professors should there teach 
the different branches of mathematics, physics, and morals ; while the colleges should 
retain only instruction in grammar, rhetoric, and logic. This was to bring matters 
toward the very statutory constitution subverted in the English Universities by the 
colleges, and which, with all its imperfections, was even more complete than that 
proposed by Ramus, as an improvement on a collegial mechanism of tuition, perfec 
tion itself, in comparison to the intrusive system of Oxford. 



40* ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

fellows frustrated the common right of graduates to the office of 
tutor ; and 3°, How the fellow-tutors supplanted the professors 
— how the colleges superseded the University. 
• 1. In the mode of teaching — in the subjects taught — in the 
forms of graduation — and in the general mechanism of the facul- 
ties, no Universities, for a long time, resembled each other more 
closely than the "first and second schools of. the church," Paris 
and Oxford; but in the constitution and civil polity of the bodies, 
there were from the first considerable differences. — In Oxford, 
the University was not originally established on the distinction 
of Nations ; though, in the sequel, the great national schism of 
the Northern and Southern men had almost determined a division 
similar to that which prevailed from the first in the other ancient 
Universities. 1 — In Oxford, the Chancellor and his deputy com- 
bined the powers of the Rector and the two Chancellors in Paris ; 
and the inspection and control, chiefly exercised in the latter, 
through the distribution of the scholars of the University into 
Nations and Tribes, under the government of Rector, Procura- 
tors, and Deans, was in the former more especially accomplished 
by collecting the students into certain privileged Houses, under 
the control of a Principal responsible for the conduct of the mem- 
bers. This subordination was not indeed established at once ; 
and the scholars at first lodged, without domestic superintendence, 
in the houses of the citizens. In the year 1231, we find it only 
ordained, by royal mandate, "that every clerk or scholar resident 
in Oxford or Cambridge, must subject himself to the discipline 
and tuition of some Master of the Schools, 2 i. e., we presume, 
enter himself as the peculiar disciple of one or other of the actual 
Regents. ("Wood and Fuller's Annals, a. c.) — In the same year 
Taxators are established in both universities. (See Fuller, who 
gives that document at length.) — By the commencement of the 
fifteenth century, it appears, however, to have become established 
law, that all scholars should be members of some College, Hall, 
or Entry, under a responsible head (Wood, a. 1408;) and in the 
subsequent history of the university, we find more frequent and 

1 Matters went so far, that as, in Paris, each of the four Nations elected its own 
Procurator, so, in Oxford (what is not mentioned by Wood), the two Proctors (procu- 
ratorcs) were necessarily chosen, one from the Northern, the other from the Southern 
men; also the two Scrutators, anciently distinct (?) from the Proctors. — [For Cam- 
bridge, see Peacock, pp. 28, 111.] 

2 [Fuller has magistro scholarium, in which case it should be translated master of 
tcholars. Compare BuIeus, ii. 63.] 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 409 

decisive measures taken in Oxford against the Chamber 'delcyns, 
or scholars haunting the schools, but of no authorized house, 
than in Paris were ever employed against the Martinets. — 
(Wood, aa. 1413, 1422, 1512, &o.)— In the foreign Universities 
it was never incumbent on any, beside the students of the Fac- 
ulty of Arts, to be under collegial or bursal superintendence ; in 
the English Universities, the graduates and undergraduates of 
every faculty were equally required to be members of a privileged 
house. 

By this regulation, the students were compelled to collect 
themselves into houses of community, variously denominated 
Halls, Inns, Hostles, Entries, Chambers (Aulae, Hospitia, Intro- 
itus, Camerae). These Halls were governed by peculiar statutes 
established by the University, by whom they were also visited 
and reformed ; and administered by a Principal, elected by the 
scholars themselves, but admitted to his office by the chancellor 
or his deputy, on finding caution for payment of the rent. The 
halls were in general held only on lease ; but by a privilege com- 
mon to most Universities, houses once occupied by clerks or stu- 
dents could not again be resumed by the proprietor, or taken from 
the gown, if the rent were punctually discharged, the rate of 
which was quinquennially fixed by the academical taxators. The 
great majority of the scholars who inhabited these halls lived at 
their own expense ; but the benevolent motives which, in other 
countries, determined the establishment of colleges and private 
bur see, nowhere operated more powerfully than in England. 1 In 
a few houses, foundations were made for the support of a certain 
number of indigent scholars, who were incorporated as fellows (or 
joint participators in the endowment), under the government of 
a head. But with an unenlightened liberality, these benefactions 
were not, as elsewhere, exclusively limited to learners, during 
their academical studies, and to instructors ; they were not even 
limited to merit ; while the subjection of the Colleges to private 
statutes, and their emancipation from the control of the academ- 
ical authorities, gave them interests apart from those of the pub- 

1 Lipsius, after speaking of the Psedagogia of Louvain, where he was Professor : — 
" Pergamus ; nam et aliud Collegiorum genus est, ubi non tarn docetur quant alitur 
juventus, et subsidia studiorum in certos annos habet. Pulchrum inventum, et quod 
in Angiia magnifice usurpatur ; neque enim in orbe terrarum simile esse, addam et 
fuisse. Magnae illic opes et vectigalia : verbo vobis dicam 1 Unum Oxoniense colle- 
gium (rem inquisivi) superet vel decern nostra." (Lovanium, 1. iii. c. 5. — See also 
Polydori Virgilii Angl. Hist. 1. v. p. 107, edit. Basil.) 



410 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

lie, and not only disqualified them from co-operating toward the 
general ends of the University, but rendered them, instead of 
powerful aids, the worst impediments to its utility. 

The Colleges, into which commoners, or members not on the 
foundation, were, until a comparatively modern date, rarely 
admitted (and this admission, be it noted, is to the present hour 
wholly optional), remained also for many centuries few in compa- 
rison with the Halls. The latter were counted by hundreds ; the 
former, in Oxford, even at the present day, extend only to nine- 
teen. 

At the commencement of the fourteenth century, the number 
of the halls was about three hundred (Wood, a. 1307) — the num- 
ber of the secular colleges, at the highest, only three. — At the 
commencement of the fifteenth century, when the colleges had 
risen to seven, a Fellow of Queen's laments, that the students 
had diminished as the foundations had increased. (Ullerston, 
Defensorium, Sfc. written 1401.) — [John Major, who was incor- 
porated, at least, in Cambridge, in his curious picture of the En- 
glish Universities, records, that, at the close of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, there were " in each, from four to five thousand scholars, 
all grown up, carrying swords and bows, and, in great part, gen- 
try." (De Gestis Scotorum, L. i. c. 5.)] — At the commencement 
of the sixteenth century, the number of halls had fallen to fifty- 
five (Wood, a. 1503), while the secular colleges had, before 1516, 
been multiplied to twelve. — The causes which had hitherto occa- 
sioned this diminution in the number of scholars, and in the 
number of the houses destined for their accommodation, were, 
among others, the plagues, by which Oxford was so frequently 
desolated, and the members of the University dispersed — the civil 
wars of York and Lancaster — the rise of other rival Universities 
in Gfreat Britain and on the Continent — and, finally, the sinking 
consideration of the scholastic philosophy. 1 The character which 
the Reformation assumed in England, co-operated, however, still 
more powerfully to the same result. Of itself, the schism in 
religion must necessarily have diminished the resort of students 
to the University, by banishing those who did not acquiesce in 
the new opinions there inculcated by law ; while among the re- 
formed themselves, there arose an influential party, who viewed 
the academical exercises as sophistical, and many who even 

1 The same decline was, at this period, experienced in the continental Universities. 
See the article on the Epist. Obs. Vir. pp. 207, 208, of this volume, Note 2 . 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 411 

regarded degrees as Antichristian. But in England the Reform- 
ation incidentally operated in a more peculiar manner. Unlike 
its fate in other countries, this religious revolution was absolutely 
governed by the fancies of the royal despot for the time ; and so 
uncertain was the caprice of Henry, so contradictory the policy 
of his three immediate successors, that for a long time it was 
difficult to know what was the religion by law established for the 
current year, far less possible to calculate, with assurance, on 
what would be the statutory orthodoxy for the ensuing. At the 
same time, the dissolution of the monastic orders dried up one 
great source of academical prosperity ; while the confiscation of 
monastic property, which was generally regarded as only a fore- 
taste of what awaited the endowments of the Universities, and 
the superfluous revenues of the clergy, rendered literature and 
the church, during this crisis, uninviting professions, either for 
an ambitious, or (if disinclined to martyrdom) for a conscientious 
man. The effect was but too apparent ; for many years the 
Universities were almost literally deserted. 1 

1 In the year 1539, the House of Convocation complains, in a letter addressed to 
Secretary Cromwell, that " the University, within the last five years, is greatly im- 
paired, and the number of students diminished by one half." — In a memorable epistle, 
some ten years previous, to Sir Thomas More, the same complaint had been still 
more strenuously urged : — " Pauperes enim sumus. Olim singuli nostrum annuum 
stipendium habuimus, aliqui a. Nobilibus, nonnulli ab his qui Monasteriis prsesunt, plu- 
rimi a Presbyteris quibus ruri sunt sacerdotia. Nunc vero tantum abest ut in hoc 
perstemus, ut illi quibus debeant solitum stipendium dare recusant. Abbates enim 
suos Monachos domurn accersunt, Nobiles suos liberos, Presbyteri suos consanguineos : 
sic minuitur scholasticorum numerus, sic ruunt Aula nostra, sic frigescunt omnes 
liberales disciplines. Collegia solum perscverant ; quae si quid solvere cogantur, cum 
solum habeant quantum sufficit in victum suo scholasticorum numero, necesse erit, 
aut ipsa una labi, aut socios aliquot ejici. Vides jam, More, quod nobis omnibus im- 
mineat periculum. Vides ex Academia futuram non Academiam, nisi tu cautius nos- 
tram causam egeris." (Wood, a. 1539, 1540.) — In 1546, in which year the number 
of graduations had fallen so low as thirteen, the inhabited halls amounted only to eight, 
and even of these several were nearly empty. (Wood, a. 1546.) — About the same 
time, the celebrated Walter Haddon laments, that in Cambridge "the schools were 
never more solitary than at present ; so notably few indeed are the students, that for 
every master that reads in them there is hardly left an auditor to listen." (Lucubra.- 
tiones, p. 12, edit. 1567.) — " In 1551," says the Oxford Antiquary, "the colleges, and 
especially the ancient halls, lay either waste, or were become the receptacles of poor 
religious people turned out of their cloisters. The present halls, especially St. Ed- 
mund's and New Inn, were void of students." (a. 1551.)— And again : " The truth 
is, though the whole number of students were now a thousand and fifteen, that had 
names in the buttery books of each house of learning, yet the greater part were absent, 
and had taken their last farewell." (a. 1552.) — " The two wells of learning," says 
Dr. Bernard Gilpin in 1552 — " the two wells of learning, Oxford and Cambridge, are 
dried up, students decayed, of which scarce an hundred are left of a thousand ; and 
if in seven years more they should decay so fast, there would be almost none at all ; 
no that the devil would make a triumph, while there were none learned to whom to 



412 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

The Halls, whose existence solely depended on the confluence 
of students, thus fell ; and none, it is probable, would have sur- 
vived the crisis, had not several chanced to be the property of 
certain colleges, which had thus an interest in their support. 
The Halls of St. Alban, St. Edmund, St. Mary, New Inn, Mag- 
dalen, severally belonged to Merton, Queen's, Oriel, New, and 
Magdalen Colleges; and Broadgates Hall, now Pembroke Col- 
lege, Gloucester Hall, now "Worcester College, and Hert Hall, 
subsequently Hertford College, owed their salvation to their 
dependence on the foundations of Christ Church, St. John's, and 
Exeter. — [In Cambridge the Hostles ended in 1540 (Fuller). 
Halls are there Colleges.] 

The circumstances which occasioned the ruin of the halls, and 
the dissolution of the cloisters and colleges of the monastic orders 
in Oxford, not only gave to the secular colleges, which all re- 
mained, a preponderant weight in the University for the junc- 
ture ; but allowed them so to extend their circuit and to increase 
their numbers, that they were subsequently enabled to compre- 
hend within their walls nearly the whole of the academical popu- 
lation, though previously to the sixteenth century, they appear 
to have rarely, if ever, admitted independent members at all. 1 
As the students fell off, the rents of the halls were taxed at a 
lower rate ; and they became, at last, of so insignificant a value 
to the landlords, who could not apply it to other than academical 
purposes, that they were always willing to dispose of this fallen 
and falling property for the most trifling consideration. In 
Oxford, land and houses became a drug. The old colleges thus 
extended their limits, by easy purchase, from the impoverished 
burghers ; and the new colleges, of which there were four estab- 
lished within half a century subsequent to the Reformation, and 
altogether six during the sixteenth century, were built on sites 
either obtained gratuitously or for an insignificant price. After 
this period only one college was founded — in 1610 ; and three of 
the eight halls transmuted into colleges, in 1610, 1702, and 1740; 
but of these one is now extinct. 

These circumstances explain how the halls declined and fell ; 

commit the flock." (Sermons preached at Court, edit. 1630, p. 23.) — See also Wood, 
aa. 1561, 1563. — [Fuller's Cambridge, Todd's Life of Cranruer, Peacock's Statutes, 
&c] 

1 See statute of 1489, quoted in Dr. Newton's University Education, p. 9, from 
Darrel's transcript of the ancient statutes, preserved in the Bodleian. 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGES, ETC. 413 

it remains to explain, why, in the most crowded state of the 
University, not one subsequently was aver restored. — Before the 
era of their downfall, the establishment of a hall was easy. It 
required only, that a few scholars should hire a house, find cau- 
tion for a year's rent, and choose for Principal a graduate of 
respectable character. The Chancellor, or his Deputy, could 
not refuse to sanction the establishment. An act of usurpation 
abolished this facility. The general right of nomination to the 
Principality, and consequently to the institution, of halls, was, 
" through the absolute potency he had," procured by the Earl 
of Leicester, Chancellor of the University, about 1570 ; and it 
is now, by statute, vested in his successors. 1 In surrendering 
this privilege to the Chancellor, the Colleges were not blind to 
their peculiar interest. From his situation, that magistrate was 
sure to be guided by their heads ; no hall has since arisen to 
interfere with their monopoly ; and the collegial interest, thus 
left without a counterpoise, and concentrated in a few hands, 
was soon able to establish an absolute supremacy in the Univer- 
sity. 

2. By statute, the office of Tutor is open to all graduates. This 
was, however, no barrier against the encroachment of the fellows ; 
and the simple graduate, who should attempt to make good his 
right — how could he succeed ? 

As the colleges only received as members those not on the 
foundation, for their own convenience, they could either exclude 
them altogether, or admit them under whatever limitations they 
might choose to impose. By University law, graduates were not 
compelled to lodge in college ; they were therefore excluded as 
unprofitable members, to make room for under-graduates, who 
paid tutor's fees, and as dangerous competitors, to prevent them 
from becoming tutors themselves. This exclusion, or the possi- 
bility of this exclusion, of itself prevented any graduate from 
commencing tutor, in opposition to the interest of the foundation 
members. Independently of this, there were other circumstances 
which would have frustrated all interference with monopoly by 
the fellows ; but these we need not enumerate. 

3. Collegial tuition engrossed by the fellows, a more import- 
ant step was to raise this collegial tuition from a subsidiary to 



1 Wood's Hist, et Antiq. Univ. lib. ii. p. 339. Hist, and Antiq. of Coll. and Halls^ 
p. 655. Statuta Aularia, sect. v. 



414 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

a principal. 1 Could the professorial system on which the Univer- 
sity rested he aholished, the tutorial system would remain the 
one organ of academical instruction ; could the University he 
silently annihilated, the colleges would succeed to its name, its 
privileges, and its place. This momentous — this deplorable sub- 
version was consummated. We do not affirm that the end was 
ever clearly proposed, or a line of policy for its attainment ever 
systematically followed out. But circumstances concurred, and 
that instinct of self-interest which actuates bodies of men with 
the certainty of a natural law, determined, in the course of 
generations, a result, such as no sagacity would have anti- 
cipated as possible. After the accomplishment, however, a re- 
trospect of its causes shows the event to have been natural, if 
not necessary. 

The subversion of the University is to be traced to that very 
code of laws on which its constitution was finally established. 
The academical body is composed of graduates and under-gradu- 
ates in the four faculties of Arts, Theology, Law, and Medicine; 
and the government of the University was of old exclusively 
committed to the Masters and Doctors assembled in Congregation 
and Convocation ; Heads of houses and college Fellows shared in 
the academical government only as they were full graduates, and 
as they were regents. The statutes ratified under the chancel- 
lorship of Laud, and by which the legal constitution of the Uni- 
versity is still determined, changed this republican polity into ar. 
oligarchical. The legislation and the supreme government were 
still left with the full graduates, the Masters and Doctors, and the 
character of Fellow remained always unprivileged by lav/. But 
the Heads of Houses, if not now first raised to the rank of a pub- 
lic body, were now first clothed with an authority such as render- 
ed them henceforward the principal — in fact, the sole administra- 
tors of the University weal. 2 And whereas in foreign Universities, 

1 This third step in the revolution, which from its more important character we 
consider last, was, however, accomplishing simultaneously with the second, of which 
it was, in fact, almost a condition. 

2 Anciently the right of previous discussion belonged to the House of Regency or 
Congregation. The omnipotent Earl of Leicester, to confirm his hold over the Uni- 
versity, and in spite of considerable opposition, constrained the Masters to surrender 
this function to a more limited and manageable body, composed of the Vice-chancellor, 
Doctors, Heads (for the first time recognized as a public body), and Proctors (Wood, 
a. 1569). [It does not appear that the Heads and Doctors hereby obtained the abso- 
lute initiative. They, as previously the Congregation, had only the right of prior 
deliberation, but not the right of preventing the introduction of a measure into the 
academical legislature. (Wood, ii. p. 167, sq.)] Laud, desirous of still farther con- 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— FELLOW-TUTORS. 415 

the University governed the Colleges — in Oxford the Colleges 
were enthroned the governors of the University. The Vice- 
chancellor (now also necessarily a College Head), the Heads of 
Houses, and the two Proctors, were constituted into a body, and 
the members constrained to regular attendance on an ordinary 
weekly meeting. To this body was committed, as their especial 
duty, the care of "inquiring into, and taking counsel for, the 
observance of the statutes and customs of the University ; and if 
there be aught touching the good government, the scholastic im- 
provement, the honor and usefulness of the University, which a 
majority of them may think worthy of deliberation, let them have 
power to deliberate thereupon, to the end that, after this their 
deliberation, the same may be proposed more advisedly in the 
Venerable House of Congregation, and then with mature counsel 
ratified in the Venerable House of Convocation." (T. xiii.) Thus, 
no proposal could be submitted to the houses of Congregation or 
Convocation, unless it had been previously discussed and sanc- 
tioned by the " Hebdomadal Meeting ;" and through this prelim- 
inary negative, 1 the most absolute control was accorded to the 



centrating the government, and in order to exercise himself a more absolute control, 
constituted the Hebdomadal Meeting of his very humble servants the Heads ; and to 
frustrate opposition from the House of Convocation to this momentous and unconsti- 
tutional change by precluding opposition, he forced the innovation on the University 
through royal statute. — The Cambridge Caput, whose powers were virtually first in- 
stituted by the Elizabethan statutes, forms a curious pendant to the Oxford Hebdo- 
madal Meeting ; and in general, the history of the two Universities is a history of the 
same illegal revolution, accomplished by the same influence, under circumstances 
similar, but not the same. [The Caput comprises six members, to wit, the Vice-chan- 
cellor, the representatives of the three higher faculties of Theology, Civil Law, and 
Physic, and of the two Houses, the Regent and Non-Regent. It originates nothing, 
but each member has a veto effectual during the academical year. " There is no part 
of the constitution of the University" (says Dr. Peacock, in his Observations on the 
Cambridge Statutes, 1841, p. 48) " so useful and necessary for many purposes, which 
has operated more injuriously to its interests, by the discouragements and obstacles 
which it has opposed to the consideration and enactment of measures of rational improve' 
menV Again (says the same able and candid writer, p. 23) " the statutes of Eliza- 
beth, by making the existence of the authority of this body permanent (during an 
entire academical year), and by the mode of its appointment, placed the whole legisla- 
tive powers of the University under the control of the Heads of Houses."'' How then can 
Dr. Whewell {Cambridge Education, § 382) state, that "the Heads of Colleges have 
no special share in the legislation of the University, except as advisers of the Vice- 
chancellor!" Nor can this be reconciled with the authority recognized as belonging 
to the Interpretations and Decrees of the Heads of Colleges ; these are regarded as of 
statutory obligation, and sworn to as such. See the learned Sergeant Miller's Account 
if the University of Cambridge (cc. 3, 4, 6), who commemorates these " bemgn inter- 
pretatipns" of the Reverend Heads by which white is coolly exBOtmded to mean Idarh, 
fcc.] , "... ■ 

And as if this preliminary negative were not enough, there was conceded by the 



416 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

Heads of Houses over the proceedings of the University. By their 
permission, every statute might be violated, and every custom fall 
into desuetude : without their permission, no measure of reform, 
or improvement, or discipline, however necessary, could be initi- 
ated, or even mentioned. 

A body constituted and authorized like the Hebdomadal Meet- 
ing, could only be rationally expected to discharge its trust : 1°, 
if its members were subjected to a direct and concentrated respons- 
ibility; and 2°, if their public duties were identical with their 
private interests. The Hebdomadal Meeting acted under neither 
of these conditions. 

In regard to the first, this body was placed under the review 
of no superior authority either for what it did, or for what it did 
not, perform ; and the responsibility to public opinion was distri- 
buted among too many to have any influence on their collective 
acts. " Corporations never blush." 

In regard to the second, so far were the interests and duties of 
the heads from being coincident, that they were diametrically 
opposed. Their public obligations bound them to maintain and 
improve the system of University education, of which the profes- 
sors were the organs ; but this system their private advantage, 
both as individuals and as representing the collegial interest, 
prompted them to deteriorate and undermine. 

When the Corpus Statulorum was ratified, there existed two 
opposite influences in the University, either of which might have 
pretended to the chief magistracy — the Heads of Houses and the 
Professors. The establishment of the Hebdomadal Meeting by 
Laud, gave the former a decisive advantage, which they were 
not slack in employing against their rivals. 

In their individual capacity, the Heads, samples of the same 
bran with the Fellows, from whom and by whom they were elected 
owed in general their elevation to accidental circumstances ; and 
their influence, or rather that of their situation, was confined to 
the members of their private communities. The Professors, the 
elite of the University, and even (of old) not unfrequently called 
for their celebrity from other schools and countries, were profess- 
edly chosen exclusively from merit; and their position enabled 



same statutes to the single college head who holds for the time the office of Vice- 
chancellor, an absolute veto upon all proceedings in the houses of congregation and 
convocation themselves. In Cambridge a preliminary veto is enjoyed by every member 
of the Caput — Caput Senatus. 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGIAL INTEREST. 417 

them to establish, by ability and zeal, a paramount ascendency 
over the whole academical youth. 

As men, in general, of merely ordinary acquirements — holding 
in their collegial capacity only an accidental character in the 
University — and elevated, simply in quality of that character, by 
an act of arbitrary power to an unconstitutional pre-eminence ; 
the Heads were, not unnaturally, jealous of the contrast exhibited 
to themselves by a body like the Professors, who, as the principal 
organs, deserved to constitute in Oxford, what in other Univer- 
sities they actually did, its representatives and governors. Their 
only hope was in the weakness of their rivals. It was easily per- 
ceived, that in proportion as the professorial system of instruction 
was improved, the influence of the professorial body would be in- 
creased ; and the heads were conscious, that if that system were 
ever organized as it ought to be, it would no longer be possible 
for them to maintain their own factitious and absurd omnipotence 
in the academical polity. 

Another consideration also co-operated. A temporary decline 
in the University had occasioned the desertion of the Halls ; a 
few houses had succeeded in collecting within their walls the 
whole academical population ; and the heads of these few houses 
had now obtained a preponderant influence in the University. 
Power is sweet ; and its depositaries were naturally averse from 
any measure which threatened to diminish their consequence, 
by multiplying their numbers. The existing Colleges and Halls 
could afford accommodation to a very limited complement of 
students. The exclusive privileges attached in England to an 
Oxford or Cambridge degree in law, in medicine, and above all, 
in the church, filled the colleges, independently of any merit in 
the academical teachers. But were the University restored to 
its ancient fame — did students again flock to Oxford, as they 
flocked to Leyden and Padua, the Halls must again be called into 
existence, or the system of domestic superintendence be aban- 
doned or relaxed. The interests of the Heads was thus directly 
opposed to the celebrity of the professorial body, both in itself, 
and in its consequences. The University must not at most tran- 
scend the standard of a decent mediocrity. Every thing, in fact, 
that tended to keep the confluence of students within the existing 
means of accommodation, found favor with these oligarchs. Sub- 
scription to the Thirty-nine Articles even at matriculation im- 
posed by the Calvinistic Leicester, was among the few .statutes 



418 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

not subsequently violated by the Arminian Heads ; the numbers 
of poor scholars formerly supported in all the Colleges were grad- 
ually discarded ;' the expenses incident on a University education 
kept graduated to the convenient pitch ; and residence after the 
first degree, for this and other reasons, dispensed with. 

At the same time, as representatives of the collegial interest, 
the Heads were naturally indisposed to discharge their duty 
toward the University. In proportion as the public or professorial 
education was improved, would it be difficult for the private or 
tutorial to maintain its relative importance as a subsidiary. The 
collegial tuition must either keep pace with the University pre- 
lections, or it must fall into contempt and desuetude. The 
student accustomed to a high standard in "the schools," would 
pay little deference to a low standard in the college. It would 
now be necessary to admit tutors exclusively from merit ; the 
fellows no longer able to vindicate their monopoly against the other 
graduates, would, in a general competition, sink to their proper 
level, even in their own houses ; while, in the University, the 
collegial influence in general would be degraded from the arbi- 
trary pre-eminence to which accident had raised it. 

In these circumstances, it would have been quite as reasonable 
to expect that the Heads of Colleges should commit suicide to 
humor their enemies, as that they should prove the faithful guard- 
ians and the zealous promoters of the professorial system. On the 
contrary, by confiding this duty to that interest, it was in fact 
decreed, that the professorial system should, by its appointed 
guardians, be discouraged — corrupted — depressed — and, if not 
utterly extinguished, reduced to such a state of inefficiency and 
contempt, as would leave it only useful as a foil to relieve the 
imperfections of the tutorial. And so it happened. The profes- 
sorial system, though still imperfect, could without difficulty have 
been carried to unlimited perfection; but the Heads, far from 
consenting to its melioration, fostered its defects in order to pre- 
cipitate its fall. 

1 Before the decline of the Halls, academical education cost nothing, and the poor 
student could select a society and house proportioned to his means, down even to the 
begging Logicians of Aristotle's Hall. The Colleges could hardly have prevented the 
restoration of the Halls, had they not for a considerable time supplied that accommo- 
dation to the indigent scholars to which the country had been accustomed. From the 
" Exact Account of the whole Number of Scholars and Students in the University of 
Oxford, taken anno 1612," it appears that about four hundred and fifty poor scholars 
and servitors then received gratuitous, or almost gratuitous, education and support in 
the Colleges. How many do so now 1 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEG-IAL INTEREST. 419 

In Oxford, as originally in all other Universities, salaried 
teachers or Professors were hound to deliver their prelections 
gratis. But it was always found that, under this arrangement, 
the professor did as little as possible, and the student undervalued 
what cost him nothing. " Gratis et frustra" Universities in 
general, therefore, corrected this defect. The interest of the Pro- 
fessor was made subservient to his diligence, by sanctioning, or 
winking at, his acceptance of voluntary gifts or honoraria from his 
auditors ; which, in most Universities, were at length converted 
into exigible fees. In Oxford, this simple expedient was not of 
course permitted by the Heads ; and what were the consequences ? 
The Hebdomadal Meeting had the charge of watching over the 
due observance of the statutes. By statute and under penalty, 
the Professors were bound to a regular delivery of their courses ; 
by statute and under penalty, the Students were bound to a regu- 
lar attendance in the public classes ; and by statute and by oath, 
but not under penalty, the Heads were bound to see that both 
parties duly performed their several obligations. It is evident, 
that the Heads were here the keystone of the arch. If they 
relaxed in their censorship, the Professors, finding it no longer 
necessary to lecture regularly, and no longer certain of a regular 
audience, would, erelong, desist from lecturing at all ; ' while the 
Students, finding attendance in their classes no longer compulsory, 
and no longer sure of a lecture when they did attend, would soon 
cease to frequent the schools altogether. The Heads had only to 
violate their duties, by neglecting the charge especially intrusted 
to them, and the downfall of the obnoxious system was inevitable. 
And this they did. 

At the same time, other accidental defects in the professorial 
system, as constituted in Oxford — the continuance of which was 
guaranteed by the body sworn "to the scholastic improvement 
of the University" — co-operated also to the same result. 

Fees not permitted, the salaries which made up the whole 
emoluments attached to the different chairs were commonly too 
small to afford an independent, far less an honorable livelihood. 
They could therefore only be objects of ambition, as honorary ap- 
pointments, or supplemental aids. This limited the candidates to 
those who had otherwise a competent income ; and consequently 

1 How well disposed the salaried readers always were to convert their chairs into 
sinecures, may be seen in Wood, aa. 1581. 1582, 1584, 1589, 1590, 1594, 1596, 
1608, &c. 



420 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

threw them, in general, into the hands of the members of the 
collegial foundations, i. e. of a class of men on whose capacity or 
good intention to render the professorships efficient, there could be 
no rational dependence. 

Some, also, of the public lectureships were temporary ; these 
were certain to be negligently filled, and negligently taught. 

Another circumstance likewise concurred in reducing the stand- 
ard of professorial competence. The power of election, never per- 
haps intrusted to the safest hands, was in general even confided 
to those interested in frustrating its end. The appointment was 
often directly, and almost always indirectly, determined by college 
influence. In exclusive possession of the tutorial office, and non- 
residence as yet only permitted to independent graduates, the 
fellows, in conjunction with the heads, came to constitute the 
great proportion of the resident members of Convocation and 
Congregation ; and therefore, except in cases of general interest, 
the elections belonging to the public bodies were sure to be decided 
by them. 1 

Nor was it possible to raise the tutorial system from its state 
of relative subordination, without an absolute subversion of the 
professorial. The tutor could not extend his discipline over the 
bachelor in arts, for every bachelor was by law entitled to com- 
mence tutor himself. But the colleges could not succeed in vindi- 
cating their monopoly even of the inferior branches of education, 



1 Since writing the above, we notice a curious confirmation in Terrce-Filius. This 
work appeared in 1721, at the very crisis when the collegial interest was accomplish- 
ing its victory. The statements it contains were never, we believe, contradicted ; and 
though the following representation may be in some points exaggerated, the reader can 
easily recognize its substantial truth. Speaking of the Professors : " I have known a 
profligate debauchee chosen professor of moral philosophy ; and a fellow, who never 
looked upon the stars soberly in his life, professor of astronomy : we have had history 
professors, who never read any thing to qualify them for it, but Tom Thumb, Jack the 
Giant-killer, Don Bellianis of Greece, and such like records : we have had likewise 
numberless professors of Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, who scarce understood their 
mother tongue ; and not long ago, a famous gamester and stock-jobber was elected 
Margaret Professor of Divinity ; so great, it seems, is the analogy between dusting 
cushions and shaking of elbows, or between squandering away of estates and saving 
of souls." And in a letter, from an under-graduate of Wadham : — " Now, it is mon- 
strous, that notwithstanding these public lectures are so much neglected, we are all of 
us, when we take our degrees, charged with and punished for non-appearance at the 
reading of many of them ; a formal dispensation is read by our respective deans, at the 
time our grace is proposed, for our non-appearance at these lectures, [N. B.] and it is 
with difficulty that some grave ones of the congregation are induced to grant it. Strange 
order ! that each lecturer should have his fifty, his hundred, or two hundred pounds a 
year for doing nothing ; and that we (the young fry) should be obliged to pay money for 
not hearing such lectures as were never read, nor ever composed." (No- X.) 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGIAL INTEREST. 42 . 

unless they were able also to incapacitate the University from 
affording instruction in the superior. For if the public lectures 
were allowed to continue in the higher faculties, and in the higher 
department of the lowest, it would he found impossible to justify 
their suppression in that particular department, which alone the 
college fellows could pretend to teach. At the same time, if 
attendance on the professorial courses remained necessary for 
degrees above bachelor in arts, a multitude of graduates, all com- 
petent to the tutorial office, would in consequence continue domi- 
ciled in the University, and the fellow's usurpation of that function 
it would be found impossible to maintain. With the colleges and 
fellows it was, therefore, all or nothing. If they were not to 
continue, as they had been, mere accessories to the University, 
it behooved to quash the whole public lectures, and to dispense 
with residence after the elementary degree. This the Heads of 
Houses easily effected. As the irresponsible guardians of the 
University statutes, they violated their trust, by allowing the 
professors to neglect their statutory duty, and empty standing to 
be taken in lieu of the course of academical study, which it legally 
implied. 

The Professorial system was thus from the principal and neces- 
sary, degraded into the subordinate and superfluous ; the tutorial 
elevated, with all its additional imperfections, from the subsidiary, 
into the one exclusive instrument of education. In establishing 
the ascendency of the collegial bodies, it mattered not that the 
extensive cycle of academical instruction was contracted to the 
narrow capacity of a fellow-tutor; — that the University was anni- 
hilated, or reduced to half a faculty — of one teachership — which 
every " graduated dunce" might confidently undertake. The 
great interests of the nation, the church, and the professions, were 
sacrificed to the paltry ends of a few contemptible corporations ; 
and the privileges by law accorded to the public University of 
Oxford, as the authorized organ of national education, were by 
its perfidious governors furtively transferred to the unauthorized 
absurdities of their private — of their college discipline. 

That the representatives of the collegial bodies, as constituting 
the Hebdomadal Meeting, were the authors of this radical subver- 
sion of the establishment of which they were the protectors — 
that the greatest importance was attached by them to its accom- 
plishment — and, at the same time, that they were fully conscious 
of sacrificing the interests of \h& University and public to a private 



422 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

job ; — all this is manifested by the fact, that the Heads of Houses, 
rather than expose the college usurpations to a discussion by the 
academical and civil legislatures, not only submitted to the dis- 
grace of leaving their smuggled system of education without a 
legal sanction, but actually tolerated the reproach of thus con- 
verting the great seminary of the English Church into a school of 
perjury, without, as far as we know, an effort either at vindication 
or amendment. This grevious charge, though frequently advanced 
both by the friends and enemies of the establishment, we mention 
with regret; we do not see how it can be rebutted, but shall be 
truly gratified if it can. Let us inquire. 

At matriculation, every member of the University of Oxford 
solemnly swears to an observance of the academical statutes, of 
which he receives a copy of the Excerpta, that he may be unable 
to urge the plea of ignorance for their violation ; and at every 
successive step of graduation, the candidate not only repeats this 
comprehensive oath, but after hearing read, by the senior Proctor, 
a statutory recapitulation of the statutes which prescribe the 
various public courses to be attended, and the various public exer- 
cises to be performed, as the conditions necessary for the degree, 
specially makes oath, "that having heard what was thus read, 
and having, within three days, diligently read or heard read [the 
other statutes having reference to the degree he is about to take], 
moreover the seventh section of the sixth title, that he has per- 
formed all that they require, those particulars excepted for which 
he has received a dispensation.'''' (Stat. T. ii. § 3, T. ix. S. vi. $ 
1-3.) The words in brackets are omitted in the re-enactment 
of 1808. (Add. T. ix. k 3.) 

Now, in these circumstances, does it not follow that every 
member of the University commits perjury, who either does not 
observe the statutory enactments, or does not receive a dispensa- 
tion for their non-observance ? 

Under the former alternative, false swearing is manifestly in- 
evitable. Of the University laws, it is much easier to enumerate 
those which are not violated than those which are; and the "Ex- 
cerpta Statutorum" which the intrant receives at matriculation, 
far from enabling him to prove faithful to his oath, serves only to 
show him the extent of the perjury, which if he does not fly the 
University, he must unavoidably incur. Suffice it to say, that 
almost the only statutes now observed, are those which regulate 
matters wholly accidental to the essential ends of the institution — 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGIAL INTEREST. 423 

as the civil polity of the corporation, or circumstances of mere form 
and ceremonial. The whole statutes, on the contrary, that con- 
stitute the heing and the well-being of the University, as an 
establishment of education in general, and in particular, of educa- 
tion in the three learned professions — these fundamental statutes 
are, one and all, absolutely reduced to a dead letter. And why? 
Because they establish the University on the system of profes- 
sorial instruction. The fact is too notorious to be contradicted, 
that while every statute which comports with the private inter- 
est of the college corporations is religiously enforced, every statute 
intended to insure the public utility of the University, but in- 
compatible with their monopoly, is unscrupulously violated. 

The latter alternative remains ; but does dispensation afford 
a postern of escape ? — The statutes bestow this power exclusively 
on the Houses of Congregation and Convocation, and the limits 
of "Dispensable" and "Indispensable Matter" are anxiously and 
minutely determined. Of itself, the very fact that there was 
aught indispensable in the system at all, might satisfy us, with- 
out farther inquiry, that at least the one essential part of its 
organization, through which the University, by law, accomplishes 
the purposes of its institution, could not be dispensed with ; for 
this would be nothing else then a dispensation of the University 
itself. But let us inquire further : 

The original statute (Corp. St. T. ix. S. iv. § 2), determining 
the Dispensable Matter competent to the House of Congregation, 
was re-enacted, with some unimportant omissions, in 1801 and 
1808. (Add. p. 136, 188). By these statutes, there is allowed 
to that House the power of dispensation in twenty-three specified 
cases of which the fourth — " Pro minus diligenti publicoruin 
Lectorum auditione" — need alone be mentioned, as showing, by 
the only case in point, how limited is the power committed to 
Congregation, of dispensing with the essential business of the 
University. The students were unconditionally bound, by oath 
and statute, to a regular attendance on the different classes ; and 
a dispensation for the cause of " a just impediment" is here al- 
lowed to qualify, on equitable grounds, the rigor of the law. It 
will not be contended, that a power of dispensation allowed for 
the not altogether diligent attendance on the public readers, was 
meant by the legislature to concede a power of dispensing with 
all attendance on the professorial courses ; nay, of absolutely dis» 
pensing with these courses themselves. 



424 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

There lias been no subsequent enactment, modifying the Lau- 
dian statutes touching the dispensing power of Convocation. 
This house, though possessing the right of rescinding old and of 
ratifying new laws, felt it necessary to restrict its prerogative of 
lightly suspending their application in particular cases, in order 
to terminate "the too great license of dispensation, which had 
heretofore wrought grievous detriment to the University." (Corp. 
St. T. x. ii. h 5). Accordingly, under the head of Dispensable 
Matter, there is to be found nothing to warrant the supposition 
that power is left with Convocation of dispensing with the regular 
lectures of all or any of its professors, or with attendance on these 
lectures by all or any of its scholars. On the contrary, it is only 
permitted, at the utmost, to give dispensation to an ordinary (or 
public) reader, who had been forced by necessity to deliver his 
lecture, through a substitute, without the regular authorization. 
(T. x. S. ii. § 4.) — Again, under the head of Indispensable Matter, 
those cases are enumerated in which the indulgence had formerly 
been abused. All defect of standing (standing at that time meant 
length of attendance on the professorial lectures), all non-perform- 
ance of exercise, either before or after graduation, are declared 
henceforward indispensable. But if the less important requisites 
for a degree, and in which a relaxation had previously been some- 
times tolerated, are now rendered imperative ; multo majus, must 
the conditions of paramount importance, such as delivery of, and 
attendance on, the public courses, he held as such — -conditions, a 
dispensation for which having, never heretofore been asked, or 
granted, or conceived possible, a prospective prohibition of such 
abuse could never, by the legislature, be imagined necessary. At 
the same time, it is declared, that hereafter no alteration is to be 
attempted of the rules, by which founders, with consent of the 
University, had determined the duties of the chairs by them en- 
dowed ; and these rules, as thus modified and confirmed, consti- 
tute a great proportion of the statutes by which the system of 
public lectures is regulated. (T. x. S. ii. \ 5.) — Under both heads, 
a general power is, indeed, left to the Chancellor, of allowing the 
Hebdomadal Meeting to propose a dispensation; but this only 
"from some necessary and very urgent cause," and "in cases 
which are not repugnant to academical discipline." We do not 
happen to know, and can not at the moment obtain the informa- 
tion, whether there now is, or is not, a form of dispensation passed 
in convocation for the non-delivery of their lectures by the public 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGIAL INTEREST. 425 

readers, and for the non-attendance on these lectures by the 
students. Nor is the fact of the smallest consequence to the 
question. For either the statutes are violated without a dispen- 
sation, or a dispensation is obtained in violation of the statutes. 
[See next following article.] 

But as there is nothing in the terms of these statutes, however 
casuistically interpreted, to afford a color for the monstrous sup- 
position, that it was the intention of the legislature to leave to 
either house the power of arbitrarily suspending the whole 
mechanism of education established by law, that is, of dispensing 
with the University itself, whereas their whole tenor is only sig- 
nificant as proving the reverse ; let us now look at the " Epino- 
mis, or explanation of the oath taken by all, to observe the stat- 
utes of the University, as to ivhat extent it is to be held binding,'''' 
in which the intention of the legislature, in relation to the mat- 
ter at issue, is unequivocally declared. This important article, 
intended to guard against all sophistical misconstruction of the 
nature and extent of the obligation incurred by this oath, though 
it has completely failed in preventing its violation, renders, at 
least, all palliation impossible. 

It is here declared, that all are forsworn who wrest the terms 
of the statutes to a sense different from that intended by the 
legislature, or take the oath under any mental reservation. Con- 
sequently, those are perjured : 1°, who aver they have performed, 
or do believe, what they have not performed, or do not believe ; 
2°, they who, violating a statute, do not submit to the penalty 
attached to that violation ; 3°, they who proceed in their degrees 
without a dispensation for the non-performance of dispensable 
conditions, but much more they who thus proceed without actually 
performing those prerequisites ivhich are indispensable. As to 
other delicts" (we translate literally), "if there be no contempt, 
no gross and obstinate negligence of the statutes and their penal- 
ties ; and if the delinquents have submitted to the penalties sanc- 
tioned "by the statutes, they are not to be held guilty of violating 
the religious obligation of their oath. Finally, as the reverence 
due to their character exempts the Magistrates of the Univer- 
sity from the common penalties of other transgressors, so on 
them there is incumbent a stronger conscientious obligation ; in- 
asmuch as they are bound not only to the faithful discharge of 
their own duties, but likewise diligently to take care that al] 
others in like manner perform theirs. Not, however, that it is 



426 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

intended that every failure in their duties should at once involve 
them in the crime of perjury. But since the keeping and guard- 
ianship of the Statutes is intrusted to their fidelity, if [may it 
never happen !) through their negligence or sloth, they suffer 
any statutes whatever to fall into desuetude, and silently, as it 
were, to be abrogated, in that event we decree them guilty of 
broken faith and of perjury." What would these legislators 
have said, could they have foreseen that these "Reverend Magis- 
trates of the University" should "silently abrogate" every funda- 
mental statute in the code of which they were the appointed — - 
the sworn guardians ? 

It must, as we observed, have been powerful motives which 
could induce the Heads of Houses, originally to incur, or subse- 
quently to tolerate, such opprobrium for themselves and the Uni- 
versity ; nor can any conceivable motive be assigned for either, 
except that these representatives of the collegial interest were 
fully aware that the intrusive system was not one for which a 
sanction could be hoped from the academical and civil legislatures, 
while, at the same time, it was too advantageous for themselves 
not to be quietly perpetuated, even at such a price. 

We do not see how the Heads could throw off the charge of 
"broken faith and perjury," incurred by their "silent abroga- 
tion" of the University statutes, even allowing them the plea 
which some low moralists have advanced in extenuation of the 
perjury committed by the non-observance of certain College 
statutes. 1 

For, in the first place, this plea supposes that the observance, 
of the violated statute is manifestly inconsistent with the end of 
the institution, toward which it only constituted a mean. Here, 
however, it can not be alleged that the statutory, or professorial 
system, is manifestly inconsistent with the ends of a University ; 
seeing that all Universities, except the English, employ that 
instrument exclusively, and as the best ; and that Oxford, under 
her new tutorial dispensation, has never manifestly been the ex- 
emplar of academical institutions. 

In the second place, even admitting the professorial system to 
be notoriously inconvenient, still the plea supposes that the in- 
convenience has arisen from a change of circumstances unknown 



1 Paley, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, b. ii. c. 21. His arguments 
would justify a repeal of such statutes by public authority, never their violation by 
private and interested parties, after swearing to their observance. 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGIAL INTEREST. 427 

to the lawgiver, and subsequent to the enactment. But in the 
present case, the only change (from the maturer age of the stu- 
dent) has been to enhance the importance of the professorial 
method, and to diminish the expediency of the tutorial. 

But in the third place, such a plea is, in the present instance, 
incompetent altogether. This is not the case of a private foun- 
dation, where the lawgiver is defunct. Here the institution is 
public — the lawgiver perpetual ; and he might at every moment 
have been interrogated concerning the repeal or observance of 
his statutes. That lawgiver is the House of Convocation. The 
heads in the Hebdomadal Meeting are constituted the special 
guardians of the academical statutes and their observance ; and, 
as we formerly explained, except through them, no measure can 
be proposed in Convocation for instituting new laws, or for render- 
ing old laws available. They have a ministerial, but no legisla- 
tive function. Now the statutory system of public teaching fell 
into desuetude, either in opposition to their wishes and endeavors, 
or with their concurrence. 

The former alternative is impossible. Supposing even the 
means of enforcing the observance of the statutes to have been 
found incompetent, it was their duty both to the University and 
to themselves, to have applied to the legislative body for power 
sufficient to enable them to discharge their trust, or to be relieved 
of its responsibility. By law, they are declared morally and relig- 
iously responsible for the due observance of the statutes. No 
body of men would, without inducement, sit down under the 
brand of " violated faith and perjury." Now this inducement 
must have been either a public, or a private advantage. Public 
it could not have been. There is no imaginable reason, if the 
professorial system were found absolutely or comparatively use- 
less, why its abolition or degradation should not have been openly 
moved in Convocation ; and why, if the tutorial system were 
calculated to accomplish all the ends of academical instruction, 
it should either at first have crept to its ascendency through per- 
jury and treason, or after approving its sufficiency, have still 
only enjoyed its monopoly by precarious toleration, and never 
demanded its ratification on the ground of public utility. If the 
new system were superior to the old, why hesitate to proclaim 
that the academical instruments were changed ? If Oxford were 
now singular in perfection, why delusively pretend that her me- 
thods were still those of Universities in general ? It was only 



428 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD. 

necessary that the heads either brought themselves, or allowed to 
be brought by others, a measure into Convocation to repeal the 
obsolete and rude, and to legitimate the actual and improved. 

But as the heads never consented that this anomalous state of 
gratuitous perjury and idle imposition should cease, we are driven 
to the other alternative of supposing, that in the transition from 
the statutory to the illegal, the change was originally determined, 
and subsequently maintained, not because the surreptitious sys- 
tem was conducive to the public ends of the University, but 
because it was expedient for the interest of those private corpo- 
rations, by whom this venerable establishment has been so long- 
latterly administered. The collegial bodies and their heads were 
not ignorant of its imperfections, and too prudent to hazard their 
discussion. They were not to be informed that their policy was 
to enjoy what they had obtained, in thankfulness and silence ; 
not to risk the loss of the possession by an attempt to found it 
upon right. They could not but be conscious, that should they 
even succeed in obtaining — what was hardly to be expected — a 
ratification of their usurpations from an academical legislature, 
educated under their auspices, and strongly biassed by their in- 
fluence, they need never expect that the State would tolerate, 
that those exclusive privileges conceded to her graduates, when 
Oxford was a University in which all the faculties ivere fully 
and competently taught, should be continued to her graduates, 
when Oxford no longer afforded the public instruction necessary 
for a degree in any faculty at all. The very agitation of the 
subject would have been a signal for the horrors of a Visitation. 

The strictures, which a conviction of their truth, and our in- 
terest in the honor and utility of this venerable schooi, have con- 
strained us to make on the conduct of the Hebdomadal Meeting. 
we mainly apply to the heads of houses of a former generation, 
and even to them solely in their corporative capacity. Of the 
late and present members of this body, we are happy to acknowl- 
edge, that, during the last twenty-five years, so great an im- 
provement has been effected through their influence, that in some 
essential points Oxford may, not unworthily, be proposed as a 
pattern to most Other Universities. But this improvement, though 
important, is partial, and can only receive its adequate develop- 
ment by a return to the statutory combination of the professorial 
and tutorial systems. That this combination is implied in the 
constitution of a perfect University, is even acknowledged by the 



HISTORY OF THE CORRUPTION— COLLEGIAL INTEREST. 429 

most intelligent individuals of the collegial interest — by the ablest 
champions of the tutorial discipline t 1 such an opinion can not, 
however, be expected to induce a majority of the collegial bodies 
voluntarily to surrender the monopoly they have so long enjoyed, 
and to descend to a subordinate situation, after having occupied 
a principal. All experience proves, that Universities, like other 
corporations, can only be reformed from without. " Voila," says 
Crevier, speaking of the last attempt at a reform of the Univer- 
sity of Paris by itself — "voila a quoi aboutirent tant de projets, 
tant de deliberations : et cette nouvelle tentative, aussi infruc- 
tueuse que les precedentes, rend de plus en plus visible la maxime 
claire en soi, que les campagnies ne se reforment point elles- 
memes, et quhine entreprise de reforme oil nHntervient point une 
autorite superieure, est une entreprise manqueeP 2 A Committee 
of Visitation has lately terminated its labors on the Scottish Uni- 
versities : we should anticipate a more important result from a 
similar, and far more necessary, inquiry into the corruptions of 
those of England. 

1 Copplestone's Reply to the Calumnies, &c. p. 146. 

2 Histoire de VTJniversite de Paris, t. vi. p. 370. 



V.-ON THE STATE OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES, 

WITH MORE ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO OXFORD. 

(SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

(December, 1831.) 

The Legality of the present Academical System of the University 
of Oxford, asserted against the new Calumnies of the Edin- 
burgh Revieiv. By a Member of Convocation. 8vo. Oxford ; 
1831. 

In a recent Number we took occasion to signalize one of the 
most remarkable abuses upon record. We allude to our article 
on the English Universities. Even in this country, hitherto the 
paradise of jobs, the lawless usurpation of which these venerable 
establishments have been the victims, from the magnitude of the 
evil, and the whole character of the circumstances under which 
it was consummated, stands pre-eminent and alone. With more 
immediate reference to Oxford (though Cambridge is not behind 
hand in the delict), it is distinguished, at once, for the extent to 
which the most important interests of the public have been sacri- 
ficed to private advantage — for the unhallowed disregard, shown 
in its accomplishment, of every moral and religious bond — for 
the sacred character of the agents through whom the unholy 
treason was perpetrated — for the systematic perjury which it 
has naturalized in this great seminary of religious education — 
for the apathy, wherewith the injustice has been tolerated by the 
State, the impiety by the Church 1 — nay, even for the unacquaint- 

1 The Archbishop of Canterbury possesses, jure metropolitico, to say nothing of the 
inferior diocesans, the right of ordinary visitation of the two Universities, in all mat- 
ters of heresy, schism, and, in general, of religious concernment. English Bishops 
have been always anti-reformers ; and in the present instance they may have closed 



OCCASION OF WRITING— STATE OF THE QUESTION. 431 

ance, so universally manifested, with so flagrant a corruption. 
The history of the University of Oxford demonstrates "by a mem- 
orable example : — That bodies of men will unscrupulously carry 
through, what individuals would blush even to attempt ; and that 
the clerical profession, the obligation of a trust, the sanctity of 
oaths, afford no security for the integrity of functionaries, able 
with impunity to violate their public duty, and with a private 
interest in its violation. 

In being the first to denounce the illegality of the state of this 
great national school, and, in particular, to expose the heads of 
the Collegial interest as those by whom, and for whose ends, this 
calamitous revolution was effected, we were profoundly conscious 
of the gravity of the charge, and of the responsibility which we 
incurred in making it. Nothing, indeed, could have engaged us 
in the cause, but the firmest conviction of the punctual accuracy 
of our statement — and the strong, but disinterested, wish to co- 
operate in restoring this noble University to its natural pre-emi- 
nence, by relieving it from the vampire oppression, under which 
it has pined so long in almost lifeless exhaustion. 

But though without anxiety about attack, we should certainly 
have been surprised had there been no attempt at refutation. 
It is the remark of Hobbes : — " If this proposition — the three 
angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles — had been 
opposed to the advantage of those in authority, it would long ago 
have been denounced as heresy or high treason." The opinions 
of men in general are only the lackeys of their interest ; and with 
so many so deeply interested in its support, the present profitable 
system of corruption could not, in Oxford, find any scarcity of, 
at least, willing champions. At the same time it is always bet- 
ter, in speaking to the many, to say something, should it signify 
nothing, than to be found to say nothing at all. Add to this, 
that the partisans of the actual system had of late years shown 
themselves so prompt in repelling the most trivial objurgations, 
that silence, when the authors of that system were accused of the 
weightiest offenses, and the system itself articulately displayed 
as one glaring scheme of usurpation and absurdity, would have 
been tantamount to an overt confession of the allegation itself. 
If our incidental repetition of the old bye-word of " Oxonian 

their eyes on its perjury, by finding that the illegal system, in bestowing on the Col- 
lege Fellows the monopoly of education, bestowed it exclusively on the Church 
Before this usurpation the clergy only had their share of the University. 



432 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

Latin" 1 brought down on us more than one indignant refutation 
of the " calumny ;" our formal charge of Illegality, Treason, 
Perjury, and Corruption could not remain unanswered, unless 
those who yesterday were so sensitive to the literary glory of 
Oxford, were to-day wholly careless not only of that, but even of 
its moral and religious respectability; — " Diligentius studentes 
loqui quam vivere." 

But how was an answer to be made ? This was either easy 
or impossible. If our statements were false, they could be at 
once triumphantly refuted, by contrasting them with a few short 
extracts from the Statutes ; and the favorable opinion of a 
respectable Lawyer would have carried as general a persuasion 
of the legality of the actual system, as the want of it is sure to 
carry of its illegality. In these circumstances, satisfied that no 
lawyer could be found to pledge his reputation in support of the 
legality of so unambiguous a violation of every statute, and that, 
without such a professional opinion, every attempt, even at a 
plausible reply, would be necessarily futile ; we hardly hoped 
that the advocates of the present order of things would be so ill- 
advised as to attempt a defense, which could only terminate in 
corroborating the charge. We attributed to them a more wily 
tactic. The sequel of our discussion (in which we proposed to 
consider in detail the comparative merits of the statutory and 
illegal systems, and to suggest some means of again elevating the 
University to what it ought to be), might be expected to afford 
a wider field for controversy ; and we anticipated, that the objec- 
tion of illegality, now allowed to pass, would be ultimately slurred 
over, a reply to our whole argument being pretended under covert 
of answering a part. 

We were agreeably mistaken. The bulky pamphlet at the 
head of this article has recently appeared ; and we have to ten- 
der our best acknowledgments to its author, for the aid he has so 
effectually afforded against the cause he intentionally supports. 



1 Julius Caesar Scaliger Be Subtilitate, Exerc. xvi. 2 — " Loquar ergo meo more, 
barbare et ab Oxonio ;" and honest Anthony admits that " Oxoniensis loquendi mos" 
was thus proverbially used. — Speaking of Scaliger and Oxford, we may notice that, 
from a passage in the same work (Exerc. xcix.), it clearly appears that this transcend- 
ent genius may be claimed by Oxford, as among her sons. "Lutetise aut Oxonii, 
modica induti togula, hyemes non solum ferre, sed etiam frangere (Hditi7lttts. ,i The 
importance of this curious discovery, unsuspected by Scioppius, and contradictory of 
what Joseph Scaliger and all others have asserted and believed of the early life of his 
father, will be appreciated by those interested in the mysterious biography of this 
(prince or impostor) illustrious philosopher and critic. 



OCCASION OF WRITING— STATE OF THE QUESTION. 433 

This " Assertion (the word is happily appropriate !) of the Legal- 
ity of the present academical system of Oxford" manifests two 
things : — How unanswerable are our statements, when the oppo- 
nent, who comes forward professing to refute the " new and 
unheard-of calumny," never once ventures to look them in the 
face ; and, How intensely felt by the Collegial interest must be 
the necessity of a reply — a reply at all hazards — when a Mem- 
ber of the Venerable House of Convocation could stoop to such 
an attempt at delusion, as the present semblance of an answer 
exhibits. • 

It may sound like paradox to say, that this pamphlet is no 
answer to our paper, and yet, that we are bound to accord it a 
reply. But so it is. Considered merely in reference to the 
points maintained by us, we have no interest in disproving its 
statements : for it is, in truth, no more a rejoinder to our reason- 
ing, than to the Principia of Newton. Nay less. For, in fact, 
our whole proof of the illegality of the present order of things in 
Oxford, and of the treachery of the College Heads, would be 
invalidated, were the single proposition, which our pretended 
antagonist so ostentatiously vindicates against us, not accurately 
true. We admit, that if we held what he refutes as ours, our 
positions would be not only false, but foolish ; nay, that if we 
had not established the very converse, as the beginning, middle, 
and end of our whole argument, this argument would not only be 
unworthy of an elaborate answer, but of any serious considera- 
tion at all. It is a vulgar artifice to misrepresent an adversary, 
to gain the appearance of refuting him ; but never was this con- 
temptible manoeuvre so impudently and systematically practiced. 
In so far as it has any reference to our reasoning, the whole 
pamphlet is from first to last, just a deliberate reversal of all our 
statements. Its sophistry (the word is too respectable) is not an 
ignoratio, but a mutatio, elenchi; of which the lofty aim is to 
impose on the simplicity of those readers who may rely on the 
veracity of "A Member of Convocation," and are unacquainted 
with the paper, the arguments of which he professes to state and 
to refute. Under so creditable a name, never was there a more 
discreditable performance ; for we are unable even to compliment 
the author's intentions at the expense of his talent. The plain 
scope of the publication is to defend perjury by imposture ; and 
its contents are one tissue of disingenuous concealments, false 
assertions, forged quotations, and infuriate railing. In its way, 

E E 



434 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

certainly, it is unique ; and we can safely recommend it to the 
curious as a bibliographical singularity, being perhaps the only 
example of a work, in which, from the first page to the last, it is 
impossible to find a sentence, not either irrelevant or untrue. 

But though a reply on our part would thus be — not a Refuta- 
tion but an Exposure; a reply, for that very reason, we consider 
imperative. It forms a principal feature of the Assertor's scheme 
of delusion to accuse us of deceit (and deceit, amounting to 
knavery, must certainly adhere to one party or the other) ; yet, 
though he has failed in convicting us even of the most unim- 
portant error, many readers, we are aware, might be found to 
accord credence to averments so positively made, to set down to 
honest indignation the virulence of his abuse, and to mistake his 
effrontery for good faith. Were it also matter of reasoning in 
which the fallacy was attempted, we might leave its detection to 
the sagacity of the reader; but it is in matter of fact, of which 
we may well presume him ignorant. Aggressors, too, in the 
attack, the present is not a controversy in which we can silently 
allow our accuracy, far less our intentions, to be impugned by 
any. To establish, likewise, the illegality and self-admitted in- 
competence of the present academical system, is to establish the 
preliminary of all improvement — the necessity of change. While 
happy, therefore, to avail ourselves of the occasion in adding to 
our former demonstration of this all-important point ; we are not, 
of course, averse from manifesting how impotent, at once, and 
desperate, are the efforts which have been made to invalidate its 
conclusions. These considerations have moved us to bestow on 
the matter of this pamphlet an attention we should not assuredly 
have accorded to its merits. And as our reply is nothing but a 
manifestation of the contrast between the statements actually 
made by us, and those refuted, as ours, by our opponent; we 
are thus compelled to recapitulate the principal momenta of our 
argument, of which we must not presume that our readers 
retain an adequate recollection. Necessity must, therefore, be 
our excuse for again returning on a discussion, not less irksome 
to ourselves than others ; but we are reconciled to it by the con- 
sideration, that though we have no errors to correct, we have thus 
the opportunity of supplying, on this important subject, some not 
unimportant omissions. 

Our former paper was intended to prove three great proposi- 
tions. — I. That the present academical system of Oxford is ilk' 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— ILLEGALITY. 435 

gal. II. That it was surreptitiously intruded into the Univer- 
sity, by the heads of the collegial interest, for private ends. III. 
That it is virtually acknowledged to be wholly inadequate to 
accomplish the purposes of a University, even by members of that 
interest, through whose influence, and for whose advantage, it is 
maintained. 

I. In illustration of the first proposition, we showed that the 
University of Oxford is a public instrument, privileged by the 
nation for the accomplishment of certain public purposes ; and 
that, for the more secure and appropriate performance of its func- 
tions, a power of self-legislation is delegated to the great body 
of its graduates, composing the House of Convocation. The 
resolutions of this assembly alone, or with concurrence of the 
Crown, form the Academical Statutes, and the statutes exclusive- 
ly determine the legal constitution of the University. The whole 
academical statutes now in force (with one or two passed, we 
believe, since 1826), are collected and published in the Corpus 
Statutorum with its Appendix, and in its Addenda ; the subse- 
quent statute of courses, explaining, modifying, or rescinding the 
antecedent. 

Looking, therefore, to the Statutes, and the whole statutes, 1 we 
showed, that there were two academical systems to be distin- 
guished in Oxford — a legal and an illegal ; and that no two 
systems could be more universally and diametrically opposed. 

In the former, the end, for the sake of which the University is 
privileged by the nation, and that consequently imperatively pre- 
scribed by the statutes, is to afford public education in the facul- 
ties of Theology, Law, Medicine, and Arts (to say nothing of the 
science of Music), and to certify, by the grant of a degree— that 

1 As not sanctioned, by Convocation, the illegality of the present system is fla- 
grant. But had it been so sanctioned, it would still be fundamentally illegal ; as that 
body would have thus transcended its powers, by frustrating the ends, for the sake of 
which alone it was clothed with legislative authority at all. The public privileges 
accorded (by King or Parliament, it matters not) to the education and degrees of a 
University, are not granted for the private behoof of the individuals in whom the Uni- 
versity is realized. They are granted solely, for the public good, to the instruction 
of certain bodies organized under public authority, and to their certificate of proficien- 
cy, under conditions by that authority prescribed. If these bodies have obtained, to 
any extent, the right of self-legislation, it is only as delegates of the state ; and this 
right could only be constitutionally exercised by them in subservience to the public 
good, for the interest of which alone the University was constituted and privileged, 
and this power of legislation itself delegated to its members. If an academical legis- 
lature abolish academical education, and academical trials of proficiency in the differ- 
ent faculties, it commits suicide, and as such, the act is ipso facto, illegal. In the 
case of Oxford, Convocation has not been thus felo de se. 



436 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL). 

this education had in any of these faculties been effectually re- 
ceived. — In the latter, degrees are still ostensibly accorded in all 
the faculties, but they are now empty, or rather delusive, dis- 
tinctions ; for the only education at present requisite for all de- 
grees, is the private tuition afforded by the colleges in the ele- 
mentary department of the lowest faculty alone. Of ten degrees 
still granted in Oxford, all are given contrary to statute, and nine 
are in law and reason utterly worthless. 

In the former, it is, of course, involved as a condition, that the 
candidate for a degree shall have spent an adequate time in the 
university in prosecution of his public studies in that faculty in 
which he proposes to graduate. — In the latter, when the statutory 
education in the higher faculties, and the higher department of 
the lowest, was no longer afforded, this relative condition, though 
indispensable by law, is converted into empty standing. 

The former, as its principal mean, employs in every faculty a 
co-operative body of select Professors, publicly teaching in con- 
formity to statutory regulation. — The latter (in which the wretched 
remnant of professorial instruction is a mere hors d'ceuvre) aban- 
dons the petty fragment of private education it precariously 
affords, as a perquisite, to the incapacity of an individual, Fellow 
by chance, and Tutor by usurpation. 

To conceive the full extent of the absurdity thus occasioned, it 
must be remembered, that no universities are so highly privileged 
by any country as the English; and that no country is now so 
completely defrauded of the benefits, for the sake of which aca- 
demical privileges were ever granted, as England. England is 
the only Christian country where the Parson, if he reach the uni- 
versity at all, receives only the same minimum of Theological 
tuition as the Squire ; — the only civilized country, where the 
degree, which confers on the Jurist a strict monopoly of practice 
is conferred without either instruction or examination ; — the only 
country in the world, where the Physician is turned loose upon 
society, with extraordinary and odious privileges, but without 
professional education, or even the slightest guarantee for his 
skill." l 

II. In proof of the second proposition we showed — how, in 

1 We doubt extremely, whether the Fellows of the London College of Physicians 
could make good their privileges, if opposed on the ground that, by the statutes of the 
universities themselves, not one of them has legal right to a degree. A word to the 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— COLLEGES. 437 

subordination to the University, the Collegial interest arose; — 
how it became possessed of the means of superseding the organ 
of which it was the accident ; — and what advantage it obtained 
in accomplishing this usurpation. 

We traced how Colleges in general, as establishments for habi- 
tation, aliment, and subsidiary instruction, sprang up in connec- 
tion with almost all the older Universities throughout Europe. 
The continental colleges were either so constituted, as to form, 
at last, an advantageous alliance with the University, under the 
control of which the whole system of collegial instruction always 
remained ; or they declined and fell, so soon as they proved no 
longer useful in their subsidiary capacity. The English Colleges 
on the other hand, were founded less for education than aliment; 
were not subjected to the regulation of the university, with which 
they were never able, and latterly unwilling, to co-operate effectu- 
ally ; and their fellowships were bestowed without the obligation 
of instructing, and for causes which had seldom a relation to 
literary desert. We showed how the colleges of Oxford, few in 
numbers, and limited in accommodation, for many centuries ad- 
mitted only those who enjoyed the benefit of their foundations ; 
while the great majority of the academical youth inhabited the 
Halls (houses privileged and visited by the university), under the 
superintendence of principals elected by their own members. 

The crisis of the Reformation occasioned a temporary decline 
of the University, and a consequent suspension of the Halls ; the 
Colleges, multiplied in numbers, were enabled to extend their 
circuit ; though not the intention of the act, the restoration of the 
halls was frustrated by an arbitrary stretch of power ; the Col- 
leges succeeded in collecting nearly the whole scholars of the 
University within their walls ; and the Fellows, in usurping from 
the other graduates the new, and then insignificant, office of 
Tutor. At the same time, through the personal ambition of two 
all-powerful statesmen the Chancellors Leicester and Laud (with 
the view of subjecting the university to a body easily governed 
by themselves), the Heads of Houses were elevated to a new and 
unconstitutional pre-eminence. By the former, in spite of every 
legitimate opposition, these creatures of accident and private favor 
were raised to the rank of a public academical body ; and, along 
with the Doctors of the three higher faculties, and the two Proc- 
tors, constituted into an assembly, to which the prior discussion 
was conceded of all measures to be proposed in Convocation. By 



438 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

the latter, an absolute initiative, with other important powers, was, 
by the exclusion of the Doctors, given and limited to the Heads 
and Proctors, a body which, from its weekly diets, has obtained 
the name of the Hebdomadal Meeting ; and to obviate resistance 
to this arbitrary subjection of the University to this upstart and 
anomalous authority, the measure was virtually forced upon the 
House of Convocation by royal statute. The College Heads were 
now the masters of the University. They were sworn, indeed, to 
guarantee the observance of the laws, and to provide for their 
progressive melioration. But, if content to violate their obliga- 
tions, with their acquiescence every statute might be abrogated 
by neglect, and without their consent no reform or improvement 
could be attempted. 

Such a body was incapable of fulfilling — was even incapable 
of not violating — its public trust. Raised, in general, by accident 
to their situation, the Heads, as a body, had neither the lofty 
motives, nor the comprehensive views, which could enable them 
adequately to discharge their arduous duty to the University. 
They were irresponsible for their inability or bad faith — for what 
they did or for what they did not perform ; while public opinion 
was long too feeble to control so numerous a body, and too unen- 
lightened to take cognizance of their unobtrusive usurpations. 
At the same time, their interests were placed in strong and direct 
hostility to their obligations. — Personally they were interested 
in allowing nobody in the University to transcend the level of 
their own mediocrity ; and a body of able and efficient Professors 
would have at once mortified their self-importance, and occasioned 
their inevitable degradation from the unnatural eminence to which 
accident had raised them. Conceive the Oxford Heads predomi- 
nating over a senate of professors like those of Groettingen or 
Berlin ! — Add to this, that the efficiency of the public instructors 
would have again occasioned a concourse of students far beyond 
the means of accommodation afforded by the Colleges ; and either 
the Halls must be revived, and the authority of the Heads divided, 
or the principle of domestic superintendence must be relaxed, on 
which, however, their whole influence depended. — As representa- 
tives of the collegial interest, they were also naturally hostile to 
the system of public instruction. If the standard of professorial 
competence were high in the faculty of Arts, the standard of 
tutorial competence could never be reduced to the average capacity 
of the fellows ; whose monopoly even of subsidiary education 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— COLLEGES. 439 

would thus be frustrated in the colleges. And if the professorial 
system remained effective in the Higher Faculties, it would he 
impossible to supersede it in the lower department of the lowest, 
in which alone the tutorial discipline could supply its place ; and 
the attempt of the Colleges to raise their education from a sub- 
sidiary to a principal in the University, would thus be baffled. — 
Again, if the University remained effective, and residence in all 
the faculties enforced, the colleges would be filled by a crowd of 
Graduates, not only emancipated from tutorial discipline, but 
rivals even of the fellows in the office of tutor ; while, at the same 
time, the restoration of the Halls could, in these circumstances, 
hardly be evaded. — All these inconveniences and dangers would 
however be obviated, and profitably obviated, if standing on the 
College books were allowed to count for statutory residence in the 
University. By this expedient, not only could the professorships 
in all the faculties be converted into sinecures — the Colleges filled 
exclusively by students paying tutors' fees to the fellows — and 
the academical population reduced to the accommodation furnished 
by the existing houses ; but (what we have failed formerly to 
notice) a revenue of indefinite amount might be realized to the 
Colleges, by taxing standing on their books with the dues exigible 
from actual residence. 1 

Through the agency of its Heads, the collegial interest accom- 
plished its usurpation. Public education in the Four Faculties 
was reduced to private instruction in the lower department of the 
lowest ; and this, again, brought down to the individual incapa- 
city of every Fellow- Tutor. — The following we state in suppler 
ment of our more general exposition. 

In the first place, this was effected by converting the professo- 
rial sy 'stem of instruction, through which, as its necessary mean, 
the University legally accomplishes the ends prescribed to it by 
law, into an unimportant accident in the academical constitution. 

To this end, the professorial system was mutilated. — Public 
instruction was more particularly obnoxious to the collegial inter- 

1 The last Oxford Calendar is before us. The number of under-graduates is not 
given, and we have not patience to count them ; but we shall be considerably above 
the mark in estimating them at 1548, i. e. the number given by the matriculations for 
the year multiplied by 4. The whole members on the books amount to 5258. Deduct- 
ing the former from the latter, there remain of members not astricted to residence, 
3710. Averaging the Battel dues paid by each at thirty shillings, there results an 
annual income from this source alone of £5565 (and it is much more), to be distri- 
buted among the houses, for the improvement of headships, fellowships, the purchase 
of livings, &c. 



440 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

est in the Faculty of Arts ; and four chairs, established by the 
University in that Faculty, were, without the consent of the 
University asked or obtained, abolished by the Hebdomadal Meet- 
ing. The salaries of the Professorships of Grammar, Rhetoric, 
Logic, and Metaphysic, thus illegally suppressed, were paid by 
the Proctors out of certain statutory exactions ; and we shall state 
our reasons for suspecting that their acquiescence in this and 
other similar acts, was purchased by their colleagues, the Heads 
of Houses, allowing these functionaries to appropriate the salaries 
to themselves. The Proctors hung more loosely on the collegial 
interest than the other members of the Hebdomadal Meeting ; ' 
and as their advantage was less immediately involved in the sup- 
pression of the professorial system, it required, we may suppose, 
some positive inducement to secure their thorough-going subser- 
vience to the crooked policy of the Heads. We know too, that 
the emolument of their office, allowed by law, is just three pounds 
six shillings, sterling money ; while we also know, that its emol- 
ument, though not revealed in the calendar, is, in reality, sufficient 
to call up a wealthy incumbent from the country to the perform- 
ance of its irksome duties. We have also the analogy of another 
chair which was certainly sequestrated for their profit. The 
history of this job is edifying. The Professorship of Moral Philos- 
ophy was, in 1621, endowed by Dr. Thomas White, under strict 
conditions for securing the efficiency of the chair ; these were 
ratified by Convocation, and declared by law to be inviolable. 
And " that individuals every way competent (viros undequaque 
pares) to this readership may always be appointed," he intrusted 
(fond man !) the election to these members of the (future) Heb- 
domadal Meeting, the Vice-Chancellor, the Dean of Christ- 
Church, the Presidents of Magdalen and St. John's, and the 
Proctors (under the old system). What happened ? The chair 



1 Before the Caroline statute of 1628, the Proctors were elected by, and out of, the 
whole body of full graduates in all the faculties of the University. The office was an 
object of the highest ambition ; men only of some mark and talent had any chance of 
obtaining it ; and its duties were paid, not by money, but distinction. By this statute 
all was changed ; and another mean of accomplishing its usurpation bestowed on the 
collegial interest. The election was given, in a certain rotation, to one of the Colleges 
(the Halls being excluded) ; and in the elective college, eligibility was confined to the 
masters, and the masters between four and ten years' standing. The office was now 
filled only by persons more or less attached to the collegial interest, and these appoint- 
ed in a great measure by accident ; while, as it afforded no honors, its labors must bo 
remunerated by emolument. And let the Proctors be adequately paid, only let this 
be done in an open and legal manner. 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— COLLEGES. 441 

was converted into a sinecure ; and one or other of the Proctors, 
by the very act of self-appointment, approved undequaque par 
to inculcate Morality hy example, installed professor on every 
quinquennial vacancy. 1 What arrangement was made about 
the salary (£100), we know not. — Five out of eleven odious 
chairs were thus disposed of; and the co-operation of the Proc- 
tors secured. 

To the same end, the remnant of the professorial system, not 
abolished, was paralyzed. In our former paper, we showed how 
this system, as constituted by the Laudian statutes, though easily 
capable of high improvement, was extremely defective ; partly 
from the incompetency or ill intention of the elective bodies ; 
partly from the temporary nature of several of the chairs ; but, 
above all, from the non-identity which subsisted between the in- 
terest of the Professor and his duty. The Heads, though sworn 
to the scholastic improvement of the University, not only proposed 
no remedy for these defects ; they positively withheld the cor- 
rectives they were bound to apply ; and even did all that in 
them lay to enhance the evil. Through collegial influence, per- 
sons wholly incompetent were nominated Professors ; and every 
provision, by which the University anxiously attempted to insure 
the diligence of the public teacher, was, by the academical exe- 
cutive, sedulously frustrated. The Professors, now also most 
exclusively members of the collegial interest, were allowed to 
convert their chairs into sinecures ; or to teach, if they ultro- 
neously lectured, what, when, where, how, how long, to whom, 
and under what conditions, they chose. The consummation 
devoutly wished was soon realized. The shreds of the professo- 
rial system are now little more than curious vestiges of antiq- 
uity ; and the one essential mean of education in the legal sys- 
tem of Oxford, as in the practice of all other Universities, is of 
no more necessity, in the actual system, than if it were not, and 
had never been. 



1 This continued from 1673 till 1829. The patriotic exertions of the present Lord 
Chancellor, in the exposure of similar abuses in other public seminaries, had alarmed 
the Heads, and probably disposed them to listen to the suggestions of the more liberal 
members of their body. The job, too flagrant to escape notice or admit of justification, 
was discontinued. The Rev. Mr. Mills, Fellow of Magdalen, was nominated Profes- 
sor ; and he has honorably signalized the reform, by continuing to deliver a course of 
lectures, which, we understand, have been (for Oxford) numerously attended. His 
introductory lecture, On the Theory of Moral Obligation, which is published, shows 
with what ability he could discharge its important duties, were the chair restored to 
that place in the academical system which it has a right to hold. 



442 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

As to the lectures of the graduates at large, these were soon 
so entirely quashed, that the right of lecturing itself — nay, the 
very meaning of the terms Regent and Non-Regent, was at last 
wholly forgotten in the English Universities. 1 

This grand object of their policy, the Hebdomadal Meeting 
was constrained to carry through, without even the pretext of 
law. There is neither statute nor dispensation to allege for the 
conduct of the Heads, or the conduct of the Professors. 

In the second place, the obligation of attendance on the "public 
lectures was no longer enforced. This violation of the statutes 
was correlative of the last ; but in the present instance, it would 
appear, that the illegality has been committed under the sem- 
blance of a legal act. 

In our former article, as then uncertain touching the point of 
actual practice, we could only in general demonstrate, that no 
universal dispensation of attendance on the 'public lectures is con- 
ceded by statute, and that none such, therefore, could legally be 
passed either by Congregation or Convocation. "We have since 
ascertained, that a dispensation is pretended for this non-observ- 
ance as obtained from Congregation, under the dispensing power 
conceded to that house, " Pro minus diligenti publicorum Lecto- 
rum auditione ;" at least, such a dispensation is passed for all 

1 So long ago as the commencement of the last centuiy, Sergeant Miller, the antag- 
onist of Bentley, and who is praised by Dr. Monk for his profound knowledge of aca- 
demical affairs, once and again, in his Account of the University of Cambridge (pp. 21, 
80), assures us, that the terms " Regent" and " Non-Regent" were then not understood ; 
and the same ignorance at the present day is admitted by the recent historian of that 
University, Mr. Dyer. (Privileges, &c. ii. p. cxxiii.) Before our late article appear- 
ed, we do not believe there was a member of either English University who could 
have explained the principle of this distinction, on which, however, the constitution 
of these academical corporations fundamentally rests ; or who was aware that every 
full graduate possesses in virtue of his degree, the right of lecturing on any subject 
of his faculty in the public schools of the University. — On this right, it may be proper 
to add a few words in addition to what we formerly stated. It is certain, that, before 
the Laudian Corpus, graduation both conferred the right, and imposed the obligation, 
of public teaching ; the one for ever, the other during a certain time. — In regard to 
the former, nothing was altered by this code. The form of a Bachelor's degree is, in 
fact, to this moment, that of a license to lecture on certain books within his faculty ; 
and that of a Master's and Doctor's, a license to commence (incipere — hence Occam's 
title of Vencrabilis Inceptor) all those solemn acts of teaching, disputation, &c, which 
belong to, and are required of, a perfect graduate (T. ix.). — In regard to the latter, 
the obligation of public teaching is declared not repealed (T. iv, § 1); and if the obli- 
gation could still be enforced, a majorc, the right could still be exercised. It is only 
permitted to Congregation to dispense with the " necessary regency," if they, on the 
one hand, for a reasonable cause, think fit, and if the inceptor, on the other, choose to 
pay for this indulgence. (T. ix. S. iv. § 2. 21.) In point of fact, this right of lectur- 
ing continued to be exercised by the graduates for a considerable time after the rati- 
fication of the Corpus Statutorum. 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— COLLEGES. 443 

candidates, while no other relative to the observance in question 
is conceded. It will here be proper to prove more particularly, 
that the dispensation, in the present instance, actually accorded, 
and the dispensation necessarily required, have no mutual propor- 
tion. The dispensation required, in order to cover the violation, 
is one : — 1°, for an absolute non-attendance ; 2°, without the 
excuse of an unavoidable impediment ; and 3°, to all candidates 
indifferently. The dispensation which Congregation can concede 
— the dispensation therefore actually conceded, is, 1°, not grant- 
ed for non-attendance absolutely, but only for the negation of its 
highest quality — a not altogether diligent attendance ; 2°, not 
granted without just reason shown ; and 3°, consequently not 
granted to all, but only to certain individuals. It must be remem- 
bered, that every candidate for graduation is unconditionally 
bound by statute to have "diligently heard (diligenter audivisse) 
the public lectures" relative to his degree : while the fulfillment 
of this condition, in the same terms, is sworn to in the oath he 
makes to the senior Proctor ; and forms part of his supplication 
for a grace to the House of Congregation. But as no one could 
strictly aver that he had " diligently heard" these lectures who 
was absent from their delivery, however seldom (and the framers 
of the statutes were as rigid in their notions of perjury as the 
administrators have subsequently been lax), while at the same 
time it would have been unjust to deprive a candidate of his 
degree for every slight and unavoidable non-performance of this 
condition; it was therefore thought equitable and expedient to 
qualify the oath to the extent of allowing, " occasionally" to 
"certain persons" for the reason of a "just hinder ance," a dis- 
pensation " for the non-fulfillment of every particular, in the mode 
and form required by statute," and in special " for the not com- 
pletely regular (minus diligenti) attendance on the public readers." 
The words are : — " Cum justa quandoque impedimenta interveni- 
ant, quo minus ea omnia, quse ad GrradQs et alia exercitia Univer- 
sitatis requiruntur, modo et forma per Statuta requisitis, rite 
peragantur ; consuevit Congregatio Regentium in hujusmodi 
causis cum personis aliquibus in materia dispensabili aliquoties 
gratiose dispensare." (Corp. Stat. T. ix. S. 4, k 1, Add. p. 135.) 
■ — After this preamble, and governed by it, there follows the list 
of " Dispensable Matters," permitted to Congregation, of which 
the one in question, and already quoted, is the fourth. 

It is a general rule that all statutes and oaths are to be inter- 



444 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

preted, " ad animum imponentis ;" and the Oxford legislators 
expressly declare, that the academical statutes and oaths are vio- 
lated if interpreted or taken in a sense different from that in 
which they were intended hy them, and if against the interests 
of education (Epinomis). Now, that it was intended by Convo- 
cation to convey to Congregation, by this clause, a general power 
of absolving all candidates from the performance of the one para- 
mount condition of their degree, no honest man in his senses will 
venture to maintain. The supposition involves every imaginable 
absurdity. It is contrary to the plain meaning of the clause, 
considered either in itself or in reference to the obligation which 
it modifies ; and contrary to its meaning, as shown by the prac- 
tice of the University, at the period of its ratification, and long 
subsequent. It would stultify the whole purport of the academ- 
ical laws — make the University commit suicide (for the Univer- 
sity exists only through its public education) — and suicide with- 
out a motive. It would suppose a statute ratified only to be 
repealed ; and a dispensation intended to be co-extensive with a 
law. It would make the legislative House of Convocation to 
concede to the inferior House of Congregation, a power of dis- 
pensing with a performance infinitely more important than the 
most important of those in which it expressly prohibits this in- 
dulgence to itself ; and all this, too, by a clause of six words, 
shuffled in among a score of other dispensations too insignificant 
for mention. 

The non-attendance of candidates on the public courses, as per- 
mitted by the Heads, is thus illegal ; and. perjury is the price 
that must be paid by all for a degree. 

In the third place, the residence in the University required by 
statute to qualify for all degrees above Bachelor of Arts was not 
enforced. This violation is also a corollary of the two former ; 
and here likewise, but without success, it is attempted to evade 
the illegality. 

The House of Convocation, i. e., the graduates, regent and non- 
regent, of the University, though fully possessing the powers of 
legislation, found it necessary to limit their own capacity of sus- 
pending, in particular cases, the ordinary application of their 
statutes. If such a dispensing power were not strictly limited, 
the consequences are manifest. The project of an academical 
law, as a matter of general interest, solemnly announced, obtains 
a grave deliberation, with a full attendance both of the advocates 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— COLLEGES. 445 

and opponents of the measure ; and it is passed under the con- 
sciousness that it goes forth to the world to be canvassed at the 
bar of public opinion, if not to be reviewed by a higher positive 
tribunal. The risk, therefore, is comparatively small, that a 
statute will be ratified, glaringly contrary either to the aggregate 
interests of those who constitute the University, or to the public 
ends which the University, as an instrument privileged for the 
sake of the community, necessarily proposes to accomplish. All 
is different with a dispensation. Here the matter, as private and 
particular, and without any previous announcement, attracts, in 
all likelihood, only those in favor of its concession ; is treated 
lightly, as exciting no attention; or passed, as never to be 
known, or if known, only to be forgot. The experience also of 
past abuses, had taught the academical legislators to limit strict- 
ly the license of dispensation permitted to themselves : — " Q,uia 
ex nimia dispensandi licentia grave incommodum Universitati 
aniehac obortum est (nee aliter fieri potuit) ; statuit et decrevit 
Universitas, ne, in posterum, dispensations ullatenus proponan- 
tur in casibus sequentibus." (Corp. Stat. T. x. S. 2, § 5.) A list 
of matters is then given (described in our last paper, p. 428 sq.) 
with which Convocation can not dispense ; the most important 
of which are, however, in actual practice violated without a 
dispensation. It is sufficient here to notice, that the matters 
declared indispensable (those particulars, namely, in which this 
indulgence had formerly been abused), to say nothing of the others 
declared dispensable, are the merest trifles compared with that 
under discussion. Under the heads, both of Dispensable and of 
Indispensable Matter, a general power is indeed cautiously left 
to the Chancellor, of allowing the Hebdomadal Meeting to pro- 
pose a dispensation ; but this only " from some necessary and 
very urgent cause (ex necessaria et perurgente aliqua causa), and 
moreover under the former head, only " in cases which are not 
repugnant to academical discipline (qui disciplines Academicse 
non repugnant)." The legislature did not foresee that the very 
precautions thus anxiously adopted, to prevent the abuse of dis- 
pensation in time to come, without altogether surrendering its 
conveniences, were soon to be employed as the especial means of 
carrying this abuse to an extent, compared with ivhich all former 
abuses were as nothing. They did not foresee that the Chancel- 
lor was soon to become a passive instrument in the hands of the 
Hebdomadal Meeting ; that these appointed guardians of the law 



446 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

were soon themselves to become its betrayers ; that the Collegia! 
bodies were soon to cherish interests at variance with those of 
the University ; that nearly the whole resident graduates were 
soon to be exclusively of that interest, and soon, therefore, to 
constitute, almost alone, the ordinary meetings of the two Houses ; 
and that in these ordinary meetings, under the illegal covert of 
Dispensations, were all the fundamental Statutes of the Univer- 
sity to be soon absolutely annulled, in pursuance of the private 
policy of the Colleges. 

Under the extraordinary dispensing power thus cautiously left 
to the Chancellor, Heads, and Convocation, a legal remission of 
the residence required by statute is now attempted ; but in 
vain. 

From his situation, the Chancellor is only the organ of the 
Collegial Heads. His acts are therefore to be considered as 
theirs. Chancellor's Letters are applied for and furnished, ready 
made, by the University Registrar, to all proceeding to degrees 
above Bachelor of Arts, permitting the Hebdomadal Meeting to 
propose in Convocation a dispensation in their favor for the resi- 
dence required by statute. The dispensation is proposed, and, as 
a matter of routine, conceded by the members of the collegial 
interest met in an ordinary Convocation. — But is this legal? Is 
this what was intended by the legislature ? Manifestly not ? The 
contingency in the eye of law, for which it permits a dispensa- 
tion, and the case for which, under this permission, a dispensation 
is actually obtained, are not only different, but contrary. We 
shall not stop to argue that the dispensation obtained is illegal, 
because "repugnant to academical discipline;" for it is mani- 
festly, as far as it goes, the very negation of academical disci- 
pline altogether. We shall take it upon the lowest ground. — A 
dispensation of its very nature is relative to particular cases ; and 
in allowing it to Convocation, the law contemplated a particular 
emergency arising from " some necessary and very urgent cause" 
not to be anticipated by statute, and for which, therefore, it pro- 
vides a sudden and extraordinary remedy. But who will pretend 
that a perpetual remission of attendance to all could be compre- 
hended under this category ? Such a dispensation is universal, 
and therefore tantamount to a negation of the law. It thus violates 
the very notion of a dispensation. — Then, it does not come under 
the conditions by which all dispensations, thus competent to Con- 
vocation, are governed. It is neither " necessary''' nor "very 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— PRESENT ILLEGALITY. 447 

urgent?'' Not, certainly, at the commencement of the practice ; 
for how, on any day, week, month, or year, could there have 
arisen a necessity, an urgency, for aholishing the term of residence 
quietly tolerated during five centuries, so imperative and sudden 
that the matter could not he delayed (if a short delay were un- 
avoidable) until brought into Convocation, and approved or rejected 
as a general measure? But if the " cause" of dispensation were, 
in this case, so " necessary" and so " very urgent," at first, that 
it could not brook the delay even of a week or month, how has 
this necessity and urgency been protracted for above a century ? 
The present is not one of those particular and unimportant cases, 
with which, it might be said, that the statutes should not be en- 
cumbered, and which are therefore left to be quietly dealt with 
by dispensation. The case in question is of universal application, 
and of paramount importance ; one, of all others, which it was the 
appointed duty of the Heads to have submitted without delay to 
the academical legislature, as the project of a law to be by Con- 
vocation rejected or approved. (Tit. xiii.) 

The dispensation of residence is thus palpably illegal. 

III. In evidence of the third proposition, we showed, as already 
proved— that the pPpsent academical system is illegal, being one 
universal violation of another system, exclusively established by 
the statutes of the University ;— that this illegal system is for 
the private behoof of the Colleges ;— that this system, profitable 
to the Colleges, was intruded into the University by their Heads, 
who for this end violated, or permitted to be violated, the whole 
fundamental statutes they were appointed to protect ;-— that this 
conflict between a legal system suspended in fact, and an actual 
system non-existent in law, had been maintained solely by the 
Heads, who, while possessing the initiative of all statutes, have, 
however, hitherto declined submitting the actual system to Con- 
vocation, in order to obtain for it a legal authorization : — But all 
members of the University make oath to the faithful observance 
of the academical statutes ; and the Heads, specially sworn to see 
that these are by all faithfully observed, are by statute branded 
as pre-eminently guilty of " broken trust and perjury," if even 
" by their negligence, any [unrepealed] statute whatever is allowed 
to fall into disuse :" — Consequently, the Heads have, for them- 
selves, voluntary incurred the crime of "broken trust and per- 
jury," in a degree infinitely higher than was ever anticipated as 
possible by the legislature ; and, for others, have, for their inter- 



448 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES—OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

ested purposes, necessitated the violation of their oaths by al 
members of the University. 1 

Now, taking it for granted that, without a motive, no body of 
magistrates would live, and make others live, in a systematic 
disregard of law — that no body of moral censors would exhibit 
the spectacle of their own betrayal of a great public trust — and 
that no body of religious guardians would hazard their own sal- 
vation, and the salvation of those confided to their care : " — on 
this ground we showed, that while every motive was manifestly 
against, no motive could possibly be assigned for, the conduct of 
the Heads, in so long exclusively maintaining their intrusive 
system, and never asking for it a legal sanction ; except their 
consciousness, that it was too bad to hope for the solemn approval 
of a House of Convocation, albeit composed of members of the 
collegia}, interest, and too profitable not to be continued at every 
sacrifice. 

Rather indeed, we may now add, than hazard the continuance 
of this profitable system, by allowing its merits to be canvassed 
even by a body interested in its support, the Heads have violated 
not only their moral and religious obligations to the University 
and country, but, in a particular manner, their duty to the Church 
of England. By law, Oxford is not merely an establishment for 
the benefit of the English nation ; it is an establishment for the 
benefit of those only in community with the English Church. 
But the Heads well knew that the man will subscribe thirty-nine 
articles which he can not believe, who swears to do and to have 
done a hundred articles which he can not, or does not, perform ? 3 
In this respect, private usurpation was for once more (perversely) 
liberal than public law. Under the illegal system, Oxford has 
ceased to be the seminary of a particular sect ; its governors 
impartially excluding all religionists or none. Nor is this all. 
The natural tendency of the academical ordeal was to sear the 

1 "He is guilty of perjury, who promiseth upon oath, what he is not morally and 
reasonably certain he shall be able to perform.'" — (Tillotson, Works, vol. i. p. 248. 
Sermon on the Lawfulness and Obligations of Oaths.) 

" " Ille qui hominem provocat ad jurationem, et scit eum falsum juraturum esse, 
vicit homicidam : quia homicida corpus occisurus est, ille animam, immo duas animas ; 
et ejus animam quem jurare provocavit, et suam."— (Augustinus in Decollat. S. Joan- 
nis Baptislae et hab. 22. quaest. 5. Ille qui.) 

3 Nay, the oath for observance of the Statutes is, by the academical legislature, held 
a matter of far more serious obligation than the subscription of the Thirty-nine Articles. 
For by Statute (T. II. <J 3), the intrant is not allowed to take the oath until he reach 
the age of sixteen ; whereas the subscription is lightly required even of boys matriculat- 
ing at the tender age of twelve. [Of this more again.] 



AMPLIFIED RECAPITULATION— PRESENT ILLEGALITY. 449 

conscience of the patient to every pious scruple ; T and the example 
of " the accursed thing" thus committed and enforced by " the 
Priests in the high places," extended its pernicious influence, from 
the Universities, throughout the land. England became the 
country in Europe proverbial for a disregard of oaths; 2 and the 
English Church, in particular, was abandoned, as a peculiar prey 
to the cupidity of men allured by its endowments, and educated 
to a contempt of all religious tests. 3 As Butler has it: 

" They swore so many lies before, 
That now, without remorse, 
They take all oaths that can be made, 
As only things of course." 4 

No one will doubt the profound anxiety of the Heads to avert 
these lamentable consequences, and to withdraw themselves from 
a responsibility so appalling. We may therefore estimate at once 
the intensity of their attachment to the illegal system, as a private 
source of emolument and power, and the strength of their con- 
viction of its utter worthlessness, as a public instrument for ac- 
complishing the purposes of an University. Not only will the 
system, when examined, be found absurd ; it is already admitted 
to be so : and all attempt at an apology by any individual, by any 
subordinate, member of the collegial interest, would be necessarily 
vain, while we can oppose to it "the deep damnation" reluctantly 
pronounced on their own act and deed by so many generations 
of the College Heads themselves. 

It thus appears, that the downfall of the University has been 
the result, and the necessary result, of subjecting it to an influence 
jealous of its utility, and, though incompetent to its functions, 
ambitious to usurp its place. The College Heads have been, and 

1 " Dico vobis non jurare omnino ; ne scilicet jurando ad facilitatem jurandi veniatur, 
de facilitate ad consuetudinem, de consuefudine ad perjurium decidatur." — (Augus- 
tinus De Mcndacio.) "In Novo Testamento dictum est, Ne omnino juremus : quod 
mihi quidem propterea dictum esse videtur, non quia jurare peccatum est, sed quia 
pejerare immane peccatum est, a quo longe nos esse voluit, qui omnino ne juremus 
commovit.'' — (Idem in Epist. ad Publicolam, et hob. 22. qn. 1. in novo.) 

2 [See the reflections of Bishops Sanderson and Berkeley on this national opprobrium 
quoted in the seventh article of this series.] 

3 [This melancholy consequence came out more obtrusively, after the observation in 
the text was written. See the same article.] 

4 Another annoying consequence of the illegal state of the English Universities may 
be mentioned. The Heads either durst not, under present circumstances, attempt, or 
would be inevitably baffled in attempting, to resist the communication to other semina- 
ries of those academical privileges which they themselves have so disgracefully abused. 
The truth of this observation will probably soon be manifested by the event [And 
has been.] 

Ff 



450 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

will always be, the bane of the University, so long as they are 
suffered to retain the power of paralyzing its efficiency : at least, 
if a radical reconstruction of the whole collegial system do not 
identify the interests of the public and of the private corporations, 
and infuse into the common governors of both a higher spirit and 
a more general intelligence. We regret that our charges against 
the Heads have been so heavy ; and would repeat, that our 
strictures have been applied to them not as individuals, but exclu- 
sively in their corporate capacity. We are even disposed alto- 
gether to exempt the recent members of this body from a reproach 
more serious than that of ignorance as to the nature and extent 
of their duty to the University ; ' while we freely acknowledge 
that they have inadequately felt the want, and partially com- 
menced the work, of reformation, which we trust they may long 
live to see completed. We should be sorry indeed not to believe, 
that, among the present Heads, there are individuals fully aware 
that Oxford is not what it ought to be, and prepared cordially to 
co-operate in restoring the University to its utility and rights. 
But it is not in the power of individuals to persuade a body of 
men in opposition to their interests : and even if the whole actual 
members of the Hebdomadal Meeting were satisfied of the dis- 
honest character of the policy hitherto pursued, and personally 
anxious to reverse it ; we can easily conceive that they might 
find it invidious to take upon themselves to condemn so deeply so 
many generations of their predecessors, and a matter of delicacy 
to surrender, on behalf of the collegial interest, but in opposition 
to its wishes, the valuable monopoly it has so long been permitted 
without molestation to enjoy. In this conflict of delicacy, interest 
and duty, the Heads themselves ought to desire — ought to invoke, 
the interposition of a higher authority. A Royal or Parliament- 
ary Visitation is the easy and appropriate mode of solving the 
difficulty ; — a difficulty which, in fact, only arose from the inter- 
mission, for above the last century and a half, of that corrective, 
which, since the subjection of the University to the Colleges, re 
mained the only remedy for abuses, and abuses determined by 
that subjection itself. Previous to that event, though the Crown 
occasionally interposed to the same salutary end, still the Univer- 

1 Any degree of such ignorance in the present Heads we can imagine possible, after 
that recently shown by the most intelligent individuals in Oxford of the relation sub- 
sisting between the public and the private corporations. As we noticed in our last pape? 
the parasitic Fungus is there mistaken for the Oak ; the Colleges are viewed as con- 
stituting the University. 



WHENCE A UERORMATION ? 451 

sity possessed within itself the ordinary means of reform ; Convo- 
cation frequently appointing delegates to inquire into abuses, and 
to take counsel for the welfare and melioration of the establish- 
ment. But by bestowing on a private body, like the Heads, the 
exclusive guardianship of the statutes, and the initiative of every 
legal measure, Convocation was deprived of the power of active 
interference, and condemned to be the passive spectator of all that 
the want of wisdom, all that the self-seeking of the academical 
executive might do, or leave undone. 

Through the influence, and for the personal aggrandizement of 
an ambitious statesman, the Crown delivered over the reluctant 
University, bound hand and foot, into the custody of a private 
and irresponsible body, actuated by peculiar and counter inter- 
ests ; and, to consummate the absurdity, it never afterward 
interfered, as heretofore, to alleviate the disastrous consequences 
of this its own imprudent act. And had the Heads met, had 
they expected to meet, the occasional check of a disinterested 
and wiser body, they would probably never have even thought 
of attempting the collegial monopoly of education which they 
have succeeded in establishing on. the ruin of all the faculties of 
the University. This neglect was unfair, even to the Heads 
themselves, who were thus exposed to a temptation, which, as a 
body, it was not in their nature to resist. " Ovem lupo commi- 
sisti." But it is not the wolf, who acts only after kind, it is they 
who confide the flock to his charge, who are bound to answer for 
the sheep. To the administrators of the State, rather than to the 
administrators of the University, are thus primarily to be attrib- 
uted the corruptions of Oxford. To them, likewise, must we 
look for their removal. The Crown is, in fact, bound, in justice 
to the nation, to restore the University against the consequences 
of its own imprudence and neglect. And as it ought, so it is 
alone able — to expect, in opposition to all principle and all ex- 
perience, that a body, like the Heads— that a body even like the 
present House of Convocation — either could conceive the plan of 
an adequate improvement, or would will its execution, is the very 
climax of folly. It is from the State only, and the Crown in par- 
ticular, that we can reasonably hope for an academical reforma- 
tion worthy of the name. 

"Et spes et ratio studiorum in Caesare tantum." 
But with a patriot King, a reforming Ministry, and a reformed 



452 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

Parliament, we are confident that our expectations will not be 
vain. A general scholastic reform will be, in fact, one of the 
greatest blessings of the political renovation, and, perhaps, the 
surest test of its value. 

And on this great subject, could we presume personally to 
address his Majesty, as supreme Visitor of the Universities, we 
•should humbly repeat to William the Fourth, in the present, the 
counsel which Locke, in the last great crisis of the constitution, 
solemnly tendered to "William the Third: — " Sire, you have made 
a most glorious and happy Revolution ; but the good effects of 
it will soon be lost, if no care is taken to regulate the Univer- 
sities." 1 

On the other hand, were we to address the Senators of En- 
gland, as the reformers of all abuses both in church and state ; 
though it needs, certainly, no wizard to expose the folly of wait- 
ing for our reformation of the English Universities from the very 
parties interested in their corruption ; it would be impossible to 
do so in weightier or more appropriate words, than those in 
which Agrippa — " the wise Cornelius" — exhorts the Senators of 
Cologne, to take the work of reforming the venerable University 
of that city exclusively into their own hands : — " Dicetis forte, 
quis nostrum ista faciet, si ipsi scholarum Rectores et Prcesides 
id non faciunt ? — Certe si illis perinittitis reformationis hujus 
negotium, in eodem semper luto hsere'bitis ; cum unusquisque 
illorum talem gestiat formare Academiam, in qua ipse maxime 
in pretio sit futurus, ut hactenus asinus inter asinos, porcus inter 
porcos. Vestra est Universitas ; vestri in ilia prsecipue erudiun- 
tur filii ; vestrum negotium agitur. Vestrum ergo est omnia 
recte ordinare, prudenter statuere, sapienter disponere, sancte 
reformare, ut vestrse civitatis honor et utilitas suadent ; nisi forte 
vultis filiis vestris ignavos, potius, quam eruditos, praeesse Magis- 
tros, atque in civitatem vestram competat, quod olim in Ephe- 
sios ; — ' Memo apud nos fit frugi ; si quis extiterit, in alio loco 
et apud alios fit ille.'' Quod si filios vestros, quos Reipublicse 



1 This anecdote is told by Sergeant Miller, in his Account of the University of 
Cavibridge, published in 1717 (p. 188). It is unknown, so far as we recollect, to all 
the biographers of Locke. But William probably thought, like Dr. Parr, " that the 
English Universities stood in need of a thorough reformation ; only, as seminaries of 
the church, it was [selfishly] the wisest thing for [King and] Parliament to let them 
alone, and not raise a nest of hornets about their ears." — [The Universities are not, 
however, now so strong ; public opinion is not now so weak ; while the nation at 
length seems roused from its apathy, urgent and earnest for a reform.] 



WHENCE A REFORMATION ?— ASSERTORY PAMPHLET. 453 

vestree profuturos genuistis, bonarum literarum gratia ad external 
urbes et Universitates peregre raittitis erudiendos, cur in vestra 
urbe illos his studiis fraudatis ? Cur artes et literas non recipitis 
peregrinas, qui filios vestros illarum gratia ernittitis ad peregrinos? 
— — — Quod si nunc prisci illi urbis vestrse Senatores 
sepulchris suis exirent, quid putatis illos dicturos, quod tarn cele- 
brem olim Universitatem vestram, magnis sumptibus, laboribus 
et precibus ab ipsis hide urbi comparatam, vos taliter cum obte- 
nebrari patimini, turn funditus extingui sustineatis ? Nemo 
certe negare potest, urbem vestram civesque vestros omnibus 
Grer manias civitatibus rerum atque morum magnificentia ante- 
ponendam, si unus ille bonarum literarum splendor vobis non 
deesset. Polletis enim omnibus fortunes bonis et divitiis, nullius, 
ad vitse et magnificentiee usum egetis ; sed hsec omnia apud vos 
mortua sunt, et velut in pariete picta ; quoniam quibus hasc vivi- 
ficari et animari debeant, anima caretis, hoc est, bonis Uteris non 
polletis, in quibus solis honor, dignitas, et immortalis in longse- 
vam posteritatem gloria continetur." 1 

The preceding statement will enable us to make brief work 
with the Assertor. — His whole argument turns on two cardinal 
propositions : the one of which, as maintained b}^ us, he refutes ; 
the other, as admitted by us, he assumes. Unfortunately, how- 
ever, we maintain, as the very foundation of our case, the con- 
verse of the proposition he refutes as ours ; and our case itself 
is the formal refutation of the very proposition he assumes as 
conceded. 

The proposition professedly refuted is — That the legitimate 
constitution of the University of Oxford ivas finally and exclu- 
sively determined by the Laudian Code, and that all change in 
that constitution, by subsequent statute, is illegal. 

The proposition assumed is — That the present academical sys- 
tem, though different from that established by the Laudian Code, 
is, however, ratified by subsequent statute. 

(This refutation and assumption, taken together, imply the 
conclusion — That the present system is legal.) 

The former proposition, as we said, is not ours ; we not only 
never conceiving that so extravagant an absurdity could be main- 
tained, but expressly stating or notoriously assuming the reverse 
in almost every page, nay establishing it even as the principal 

1 Epistolarum, L. vii. ep. 26. Opera, II. p. 1042. 



454 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

basis of our argument. If this proposition were true, our whole 
demonstration of the interested policy of the Heads would have 
been impossible. How could we have shown, that the changes 
introduced by them were only for the advantage of themselves 
and of the collegial interest in general, unless we had been able 
to show, that there existed in the University, a capacity of legal 
change, and that the preference of illegal change by the Heads, 
argued that their novelties were such as, they themselves were 
satisfied, did not deserve the countenance of Convocation, that is, 
of the body legislating for the utility and honor of the Univer- 
sity ? If all change had been illegal, and, at the same time, 
change (as must be granted) unavoidable and expedient ; thr 
conduct of the Heads would have found an ample cloak in the 
folly — in the impossibility of the law. — Yet the Venerable and 
Veracious Member coolly "asserts," that this, as the position 
which we maintain, is the position which he writes his pamphlet 
to refute. "With an effrontery, indeed, ludicrous from its extra- 
vagance, he even exults over our " luckless admission" — " that 
Convocation possesses the right of rescinding old, and of ratifying 
new, laws" (p. 25) ; and (on the hypothesis, always, that we, 
like himself, had an intention of deceiving), actually charges it 
as " one of our greatest blunders" — a blunder betraying a total 
want of " common sense" — " to have referred to the Appendix 
and Addenda to the Statute-book" (p. 86), i. e. to the work we 
reviewed, to the documents on which our argument M 7 ay immedi- 
ately and principally founded I 1 

1 It may amuse our readers to hear how our ingenuous disputant lays out his pam- 
phlet, alias, his refutation of " the Medish immutability of the Laudian digest." This 
immutability he refutes by arguing : 

" From the general principles of jurisprudence, as they relate to the mutability of 
human laws. (Sect. II.) — From the particular principles of municipal incorporation, 
as they relate to the making of by-laws. (Sect. III.) — From the express words of the 
Corpus Statutorum. (Sect. IV.) — From immemorial usage, that is, the constant 
practice of the University from 1234 to 1831. (Sect. V.) — From the principle of 
adaptation upon which the statutes of 1636 were compiled and digested. (Sect. VI.) 
— From Archbishop Laud's own declarations in respect of those statutes. (Sect. VII.) 
— From his instructions to Dr. Frewin, in 1638, to submit to Convocation some 
amendments of the statute-book, after it had been finally ratified and confirmed. 
(Sect. VIII.) — From the alterations made in the statute-book after the death of the 
Archbishop, but during the lives of those who were his confidential friends, and had 
been his coadjutors in the work of reforming it. (Sect. IX.) — From the alterations 
made in the statute-book from time to time, since the death of the Archbishop's coad- 
jutors to the present day. (Sect. X.) — From the opinion of counsel upon the legality 
of making and altering statutes, as delivered to the Vice-Chancellor, June 2, 1759. 
(Sect. XI.) — p. 16. — This elaborate parade of argument (the pamphlet extends to a 
hundred and fifty mortal pages) is literally answered in two words — Quis dubitavitV 



ASSERTORY PAMPHLET. 455 

III regard to the latter proposition, it is quite true that if the 
former academical system had been repealed, and the present 
ratified by Convocation, the actual order of things in Oxford is 
legal, and the Heads stand guiltless in the sight of Grod and 
man. But, as this is just the matter in question, and as instead 
of the affirmative being granted by us, the whole nisus of our 
reasoning was to demonstrate the negative ; we must hold, that 
since the Assertor has adduced nothing to invalidate our state- 
ments on this point, he has left the controversy exactly as he found 
it. To take a single instance : — Has he shown, or attempted to 
show, that by any subsequent act of Convocation those fundament- 
al statutes which constitute and regulate the Professorial system, 
as the one essential organ of all academical education, have been 
repealed ?• — nay, that the statutes of the present century do not 
on this point recognize and enforce those of those preceding ? — 
(Add. p. 129-133, pp. 187, 188, et passim.) If not, how on his 
own doctrine of the academic oath (in which we fully coincide), 
does he exempt the guardians of its statutes, to say nothing of 
the other members of the University, from perjury ? — (Major.) 
u It" (the academic oath) "is, and will always be, taken and kept 
with a safe conscience, as long as the taker shall faithfully observe 
the academic oath, in all its fundamental ordinances, and accord- 
ing to their true meaning* and intent. And with respect to other 
matters, it is safely taken, if taken according to the will of those 
who made the law, and who have the power to make or unmake, 
to dispense with or repeal, any, or any parts of any, laws edu- 
cational of the University, and to sanction the administration of 
the oath with larger or more limited relations [i. e. ?] according 
to v)hat Convocation may deem best and fittest for the ends it has 
to accomplish."— (P '. 132.) — {Minor.) In the case adduced, the 
unobserved professorial system is a " fundamental ordinance," is 
exclusively "according to the will of those who made'; make, and 
unmake the law," exclusively "according to what Convocation 
deems the best and fittest." 1 — (Conclusion.) Consequently, &c. 

1 See Sanderson De Juramenti Obligatione, Prael. III. § 18. — too long to extract. 
— The Assertor avers, but without quoting any authority, that Sanderson wrote the 
Epinomis of the Corpus Statutorum. If true, which we do not believe, the fact would 
be curious. It is unnoticed by Wood, in his Historia, Annals, or Athena — is unknown 
to Walton, or to any indeed of Sanderson's biographers. It is also otherwise improbable. 
Sanderson left the University in 1619, when he surrendered his fellowship, and only 
returned in 1642, when made Regius Professor of Divinity. The Statutes were com- 
piled in the interval ; and why should the Epinomis be written by any other than the 
delegates 1 We see the motive for the fiction ; — it is too silly to be v\ orth mentioning. 



456 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— OXFORD.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

In confuting the propositions we have now considered, the As- 
sertor's whole pamphlet is confuted. — We shall however notice 
(what we can not condescend to disprove) a few of the subaltern 
statements which, with equal audacity, he holds out as maintain- 
ed by us, and some of which he even goes so far as to support by 
fabricated quotations. — Of these, one class contains assertions, 
not simply false, but precisely the reverse of the statements really 
made by us. Such for instance : — That we extolled the academic 
system of the Laudian code as perfect (pp. 95, 96, 144, &c); — 
That we admitted the actual system to be not inexpedient or in- 
sufficient (p. 95) ; and, That this system was introduced in use- 
ful accommodation to the changing circumstances of the age 
(p. 95.) — Another class includes those assertions that are simply 
false. For example : — That we expressed a general approbation 
of the methods of the ancient University, and of the scholastic 
exercises and studies, beyond an incidental recognition of the 
utility of Disputation, and that too [though far from undervaluing 
its advantages even now], in the circumstances of the middle 
ages ; and we may state, that the quotation repeatedly alleged 
in support of this assertion is a coinage of his own (pp. 6, 11, 83, 
96, 97, 138, 139) ;— That we reviled Oxford for merely deviating 
from her ancient institutions (pp. 5, 11, 12, 95, &c.) ; — That we 
said a single word in delineation of the Chamberdeckyn at all, 
far less (what is pronounced " one of the cleverest sleights of 
hand ever practiced in the whole history of literary legerdemain") 
" transformed him into an amiable and interesting young gentle- 
man, poor indeed in pocket, but abundantly rich in intellectual 
energies, and in every principle that adorns and dignifies human 
nature!" (p. 113.)' — Regarding as we do the Assertor only as a 
curious psychological monstrosity, we do not affect to feel toward 
him the indignation, with which, coming from any other quarter 
we should repel the false and unsupported charges of "depraving, 
corrupting, and mutilating our cited passages" (p. 24) ; — of "mak- 
ing fraudulent use of the names and authorities of Dr. Newton 
and Dr. Wallis, of Lipsius, Crevier, and Du Boullay" (p. 142); 
and to obtain the weight of his authority, of fathering on Lord 
Bacon an apophthegm of our own, though only alleging, without 
reference, one of the most familiar sentences of his most popular 
work. (p. 7.) — To complete our cursory dissection of this moral 
Lusus Naturae, we shall only add that he quotes us just thirteen 
times ; that of these quotations one is authentic ; six are more or 



ASSERTORY PAMPHLET. 459 

less altered ; one is garbled, half a sentence being adduced to sup- 
port what the whole would have overthrown (p. 20) ; and Jive 
are fabrications to countenance opinions which the fabricator 
finds it convenient to impute to us (pp. 9, 10, 11, 110, 141). 

We might add much more, but enough has now been said. — 
We have proved that our positions stand unconfuted — uncontro- 
verted — untouched ; ' that to seem even to answer, our opponent 
has been constrained to reverse the very argument he attacked ; 
and that the perfidious spirit in which he has conducted the con- 
troversy, significantly manifests his own consciousness of the 
hopeless futility of his cause. 

1 [And what was true twenty years ago, is, in every respect, true now.] 



VI.-ON THE RIGHT OF DISSENTERS TO ADMISSION INTft 
THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 



(October, 1834.) 



A Bill to remove certain Disabilities which prevent some classes 
of his Majesty's Subjects from resorting to the Universities of 
England, and proceeding to Degrees therein. 21 April, 1834. 

The whole difficulty of the question, in regard to the admission 
of Dissenters into the English Universities, lies in the present 
anomalous state — we do not say constitution — of these establish- 
ments. In them the University, properly so called, i. e. the 
necessary national establishment for general education, is at 
present illegally suspended, and its function usurped, but not 
performed, by a number of private institutions which have sprung 
up in accidental connection with it, named Colleges. 

Now, the Claim of the Dissenters to admission into the public 
University can not justly be refused ; nor, were the University 
in fact, what it ought legally to be, would the slightest difficulty 
or inconvenience be experienced in rendering that right available. 
But the University has been allowed to disappear — the Colleges 
have been allowed to occupy its place : and, while the actual, 
that is the present, right of the Colleges, as private establish- 
ments, to close their gates on all but members of their own 
foundations, can not be denied ; independently of this right, the 
expediency is worse than doubtful, either, on the one hand, of 
forcing a College to receive inmates, not bound to accommodate 
themselves to its religious observances, or, on the other, of exact- 
ing from those entitled to admission, conformity to religious 
observances, in opposition to their faith. Now, neither in the 
bill itself, nor in any of the pamphlets and speeches in favor of 
the Dissenters, or against them, is there any attempt made to 



REAL QUESTION AT ISSUE. 459 

grapple with the real difficulties of the question; and the oppo- 
nents of the measure are thus left to triumph on untenable 
ground, in objections which might be retorted with tenfold effect 
upon themselves. 

The sum of all the arguments for exclusion amounts to this : 
— The admission of the Dissenters is inexpedient, as inconsistent 
with the present state of education in the Universities, which is 
assumed to be all that it ought to be ; and unjust, as tending to 
deprive those of their influence, who are assumed to have most 
worthily discharged their trust. — In reply, it has been only feebly 
attempted, admitting the assumptions, to evade the right, and to 
palliate the inconveniences. Instead of this, it ought to have 
been boldly contended : — in the first place, that the actual state 
of education in these schools is entitled to no respect, as contrary 
at once to law and to reason ; and that all inconveniences disap- 
pear the moment that the Universities are in the state to which 
law and reason demand that they be restored ; in the second, 
that so far from unjustly degrading upright and able trustees, 
these trustees have, for their proper interest, violated their public 
duty ; and, for the petty ends of their own private institutions, 
abolished the great national establishment, of whose progressive 
improvement they had solemnly vowed to be the faithful guard- 
ians. 

In attempting any reform of an ancient institution like the 
English Universities, it should be laid down as a fundamental 
principle, that the changes introduced be, as far as possible, in 
conformity with the spirit and even the mechanism of these in- 
stitutions themselves. The English Universities, as spontaneously 
developed and as legally established, consist of two elements ; 
and the separate perfection, and mutual co-operation and coun- 
terpoise of these elements, determine the perfection of the consti- 
tuted whole. The one of these, principal and necessary, is the 
public instruction and examination in the several faculties af- 
forded by the University Proper ; the other, subordinate and 
accidental, is the private superintendence exercised in the Li- 
censed House, which the under-graduate must inhabit, and the 
private tuition afforded by the Licensed Tutor, under whose 
guidance he must place himself. We are no enemies to this 
constitution. On the contrary, we hold that it affords the condi- 
tion of an absolutely perfect University. The English Universi- 
ties, however, afford a melancholy illustration of the axiom, 



460 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

" Corruptio optimi pessimal In them the principles of health 
are converted into the causes of disease. 

In two preceding articles [the two last], we have shown (espe- 
cially in regard to Oxford, but in all essential circumstances our 
statements apply equally to Cambridge), that in the English Uni- 
versities there is organized, by Statute, an extensive system of 
Public instruction, through a competent body of Professors con- 
stantly Lecturing in all the Faculties ; but that, de facto, this 
statutory system has now no practical existence. We have 
shown that, besides this original and principal system — through 
which, in fact, alone other Universities accomplish their end — 
the English Universities came subsequently to employ two other 
subordinate means — means intended more to insure order than 
to bestow instruction. In the first place, they required, from a 
remote period, that every member of the University should belong 
to some house governed by a graduate, licensed by the academical 
authorities, and responsible to them for the conduct of the other 
members of the establishment ; and in the second, they have, for 
above two centuries, enjoined that all under-graduates, who were 
then generally four years younger than at present, should be like- 
wise under the special discipline of a tutor, whose principal office 
it was, privately to do what the University could not constitu- 
tionally, in its lay Faculty of Arts, 1 publicly attempt — " institute 
his pupil in the rudiments of religion and the doctrine of the 
Thirty-nine Articles ;" but so little was expected from this sub- 
sidiary instructor, that by statute any one is competent to the 
office who has proceeded to his Bachelors' degree in Arts (a de- 
gree formerly taken by the age at which the University is now 
entered), and whose moral and religious character is approved by 
the head of the house to which he belongs, 8 or in the event of a 
dispute on this point, by the Vice-Chancellor. We also showed 
how all these parts of the public academical constitution had 
been illegally annihilated, or perverted by the influence and for 
the behoof of a private interest in the University. This interest 

1 [It has been ignorantly contended against this, that the Faculty of Arts in the 
older Universities was not lay but clerical ; and this on the ground that the learners and 
teachers of that faculty are frequently called clerici. But those who know any thing 
of mediarval language are aware, that clcricus necessarily means nothing more than 
gownsman, scholaris. Even the expression benefit of clergy in the English law might 
have prevented the mistake.] 

2 It does not appear from the statutes that the tutor must be of the same house with 
the pupil. 



REAL QUESTION AT ISSUE— ADMISSIONS. 461 

was the collegia].. We traced how, through the unconstitutional 
elevation (by Laud) of the College Heads to a public academical 
body, intrusted with the exclusive guardianship of the statutes, 
and the initiative of every legislative measure, the collegial in- 
terest had contrived, through "the broken faith and perjury" of 
its heads, to effect the following exploits : — 1. To obtain the mo- 
nopoly of board and lodging, by frustrating the former easy es- 
tablishment of Halls (authorized, but unincorporated houses) ; 
and by preventing, through every disastrous mean, an influx of 
students to the University beyond their own limits of accommo- 
dation. 2. To usurp the monopoly of the tutorial office for their 
fellows, although fellowships are in few instances (especially in 
Oxford) the rewards of merit, but usually the gifts of accident 
and caprice. 3. To abolish the whole statutory system of public 
or professorial instruction in all the faculties ; and thus to render 
the wretched scantling of preliminary instruction afforded by the 
college fellows, the sum of necessary education for all professions 
which the University was permitted to supply. — We have reca- 
pitulated these things, because, in considering the consequences 
of the proposed measure, it is requisite to bear in mind, not only 
what is the actual, but what is the legal system of these institu- 
tions. 

With the view of simplifying the question, and removing all 
unnecessary confusion, we shall make at once certain preliminary 
admissions. 

In the first place, we admit that the colleges are foundations 
private to their incorporated members ; that their admission of 
extranet or independent members, is wholly optional ; and that, 
as they may exclude all, they consequently may exclude any. 
The legislature, can not, therefore, without a change of their 
constitution, deprive them of this fundamental right. 

In the second place, we admit that, whether the religious ob- 
servances of the colleges be imposed by their statutes or by the 
members themselves of the foundation, that it would be an un- 
warrantable exercise of legislative interference, either on the one 
hand to compel them to accommodate these observances to the 
taste of those intruded into their society ; or, on the other, to 
subvert the discipline of the house, by emancipating any part of 
its inmates from the rules established for the conduct of the 
whole. 

In the third place, we admit, that compelling the college to 



462 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

receive dissenters, it would be wholly impossible to compel, for a 
continuance at least, the dissenters to the religious observances 
of the college. 

We admit, in the fourth place, that if to the colleges were left 
the right of optional exclusion, few dissenters, in the present state 
of the Universities, would either condescend to enter, or be able, 
if so inclined, to accomplish their desire. — On the one side, the 
dissenter would be thus exposed to the humiliation of refusal ; 
constrained, if admitted, to compliance with religious exercises to 
which he is adverse ; and exposed to all the indignities through 
which a baffled bigotry might delight to avenge itself. — On the 
other hand, the accommodation in the colleges, even at pres- 
ent, is quite inadequate to the demand for admission ; the col- 
leges can not, therefore, hereafter be expected to exclude their 
brethren of the church to admit their cousins of the meeting- 
house — supposing even the irritation to have subsided, which 
the victory of the dissenters would at first, at least, inevitably 
occasion. 

In the fifth place, we admit that, as they are now operative, 
the English Universities exist only in and through the Colleges ; 
that as the Colleges are private foundations, the Universities, in 
their actual state, are not national establishments ; and that as 
it would be unjust to force the dissenters on the Colleges, conse- 
quently it would be either unjust or idle, as things at p?-esent 
stand, to bestow on dissenters the right of entering the Univer- 
sities. 

These admissions, though the points mainly contended for by 
the opponents of the bill, do not, however, determine the ques- 
tion. On the contrary, they only manifest the present preposter- 
ous state of the Universities, and the utter ignorance that prevails 
in regard to their normal condition. — It is certainly true, that if 
in Oxford and Cambridge the Colleges constitute the University, 
the dissenters have no claim to admission ; because in that case 
the University is not a national foundation. But, that the Uni- 
versity exists only through the colleges, the former being a great 
incorporation, of which the latter form the constituent parts, is a 
proposition so utterly false, and is founded on so radical an igno- 
rance of the history and constitution of the schools in question, 
that we should have deemed it wholly unworthy of refutation, 
were it not maintained by so respectable an authority as Bishop 
Copplestone; and assumed with impunity, nay, general acqui- 



REAL QUESTION AT ISSUE— OBJECTIONS. 46d 

escence-— as a basis for their argument, by Mr. Groulburn and Sir 
Robert Inglis, the representatives of either English University, 
in the recent debates in the House of Commons upon the ques- 
tion. Mr. Groulburn, in his speech against the bill, and Mr. 
Baynes, in his speech in favor of it, both asserted, that when 
Edward I. visited Cambridge, Peter-House, being then the only 
college in existence, alone constituted the University. " Peter- 
House College" (interrupts the latter) " was at that time the 
whole University." " / know it was" resumes the learned rep- 
resentative of the University, of whose history he is so well in- 
formed. At the date in question, the scholars of the University 
of Cambridge were certainly above five thousand- — the inmates 
of Peter-House^ probably under fifty ! ."We had formerly occasion 
(p. 394, note) to animadvert on this mistake ; and shall at present 
only say, that the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were 
incorporated and privileged before, in either place, there was a 
college in existence ; that they flourished as general studies long 
before a single College was established ; and that they owe their 
downfall in these latter ages to the corrupt and unconstitutional 
subjection of the Academical Legislature to the control or influ- 
ence of the College Heads. To say, in fact, that the English 
Universities are national foundations, is saying far too little. 
Those at all acquainted with the rise of the more ancient Uni- 
versities, and in particular of Oxford and Cambridge know that 
they were literally cosmopolite corporations ; and if in their priv» 
ileges a preference were betrayed at all, it was not generally in 
favor of the native. 

But admitting (what can not be denied) the natural right of 
the Dissenters to the privileges of the Public University, and on 
the hypothesis, that special grounds can not be alleged to warrant 
its suspension ;— How, it may be asked, can they make their 
right available ? 

In the first place, in whatsoever manner it has been brought 
about, the result is unfortunately certain -.—Neither University 
now affords any public edzccation worthy of the name. If, there- 
fore, it may be said, the dissenters obtain a right of entrance to 
the University, without also obtaining a right of admission to the 
Colleges, they will be foiled of all benefit from the concession. — 
To this we answer, that the dissenters and all other citizens 
are entitled to demand, that the Universities be restored to an 
efficient- — to a legal state ; and that the guardianship of the re- 



464 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

formed school be confided to worthier trustees than those who 
have hitherto employed their authority only to frustrate its end. 
— We gladly join issue with the Bishop of Exeter and Sir Robert 
Inglis on this point. 

In the second place, it may be said : — You admit that Dissen- 
ters have no title to demand admission to the Colleges ; the Uni- 
versity requires that all students should belong to a privileged 
house ; there are no privileged houses but the Colleges and their 
dependent halls; the only gates to the University are therefore 
closed — how are they to get in ? — To this we say, various expedi- 
ents may be proposed. But before attempting an answer, let us 
take a review of the rise and progress of the system of domestic 
superintendence in the Universities ; and we shall avail ourselves 
of the observations on this subject made in a former article, to 
which for proof and details we must refer. [P. 401, sq.] 

During the middle ages, the vast concourse of students of every 
country to the greater Universities made it necessary to employ 
various methods of academical police. In the English Univer- 
sities, the Chancellor and his deputy combined the powers of the 
rector and the two Chancellors in Paris ; and the inspection and 
control, chiefly exercised in the latter, through the distribution of 
the scholars of the University into nations and tribes, under the 
government of rector, procurators, and deans, was, in the former, 
more especially accomplished by collecting the students into 
certain privileged houses, under the control of a principal, re- 
sponsible for the conduct of the members. This subordination 
was not indeed established at once ; and the scholars at first 
lodged, without domestic superintendence, in the houses of the 
citizens. In the year 1231, we find it only ordained, by royal 
edict, "that every clerk or scholar [resident in Oxford or Cam- 
bridge] should subject himself to the discipline and tuition of 
some master of the schools ;" or, on a different reading, " some 
master of scholars ;" i. e. we presume, enter himself as the pe- 
culiar disciple of one or other of the actual regents. And in the 
same year, the academical taxers are instituted, in imitation of 
the foreign Universities, in order to check the exorbitant charge 
for lodging usually practiced on the part of the townsmen. — By 
the commencement of the fifteenth century, it appears, however, 
to have become established law, that all scholars should be mem- 
bers of some College, hall, or entry, under a responsible head. 
In the subsequent history of the University we find more frequent 



HISTORY OF DOMESTIC SUPERINTENDENCE. 465 

and decisive measures taken in Oxford against, the Chamber- 
dekyns, or scholars haunting the public lectures, but of no author- 
ized house, than in Paris were eve* employed against the Marti- 
nets. And while in the foreign Universities none but students 
of the faculty of arts were subjected to collegial or bursal super- 
intendence; in the English Universities, the graduates and under- 
graduates of every faculty were equally required to be members 
of a privileged house. 

By this regulation, the students were compelled to collect 
themselves into houses of community, variously denominated 
Halls, Hostels, Inns, Entries, Chambers (Aulae, Hospitia, Intro- 
itus, Camera?). These Halls were governed by peculiar statutes, 
established by the University, by whom they were also visited 
and reformed ; and they were administered by a principal, elected 
by the scholars themselves, but admitted to his office by the 
chancellor or his deputy, on finding caution for payment of the 
rent. The Halls were in general held only on lease ; but by a 
privilege common to most Universities, houses once occupied by 
clerks or students could not again be taken from the gown, if the 
rent were punctually discharged ; the rate of which was quin- 
quennially fixed by the academical taxators. The great majority 
of the scholars who inhabited these Halls lived at their own ex- 
pense ; but the benevolent motives which, in other countries, 
determined the establishment of Colleges and private burses, no- 
where operated more powerfully than in England. In a few 
houses, foundations were made for the support of a certain num- 
ber of indigent scholars, who were incorporated as fellows (or 
joint participators in the endowment), under the government of a 
head. But with an unenlightened liberality, these benefactions 
were not, as eleswhere, exclusively limited to learners, during 
their academical studies, and to instructors; and while merit 
was not often the condition on which their members were elected, 
the subjection of the Colleges to private statutes, with their 
emancipation from the control of the academical authorities, gave 
them interests apart from those of the public, and not only dis- 
qualified them from co-operating toward the general ends of the 
University, but rendered them, instead of powerful aids, the 
worst impediments to its utility. 

The Colleges, into which commoners, or members not on the 
foundation, were, until a comparatively modern date, rarely 
admitted, remained also for many centuries few in comparison 

Gg 



466 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

with the Halls. The latter were counted by hundreds ; the former, 
even at the present day, extend only to nineteen. 

In Oxford, at the commencement, of the fourteenth century, 
the number of the Halls was about three hundred — the num- 
ber of the secular Colleges at the highest, only three. At the 
commencement of the fifteenth century, when the Colleges had 
risen to seven, it appears, that the students had diminished as 
the foundations had increased. At the commencement of the 
sixteenth century, the number of Halls had fallen to fifty-five, 
while the secular Colleges had, before 1516, been multiplied to 
twelve. 

From causes, which in our former article we fully stated, the 
Universities during the period of the Reformation were almost 
literally deserted. The Halls, whose existence solely depended 
on the confluence of students, thus fell ; and none, it is probable 
would have survived the crisis, had not several chanced to be the 
property of certain Colleges, which had thus an interest in their 
support. 

The circumstances which occasioned the ruin of the Halls, and 
the dissolution of the Cloisters and Colleges of the monastic orders 
in Oxford, not only gave to the secular Colleges, which all re- 
mained, a preponderant weight in the University for the juncture, 
but allowed them so to extend their circuit and to increase their 
numbers, that they were subsequently enabled to comprehend 
within their walls nearly the whole of the academical population : 
though, previously to the sixteenth century, they appear to have 
rarely, if ever, admitted independent members at all. As the 
students fell off, the rents of the Halls, which could not be alien- 
ated from academical purposes, were taxed always at a lower 
rate ; and they became, at last, of so insignificant a value to the 
landlords, that they were always willing to dispose of this fallen 
and falling property for a trifling consideration. In Oxford, land 
and houses became a drug. The old colleges thus extended their 
limits, by easy purchase, from the impoverished burghers ; and 
the new colleges, of which there were four established within 
half a century subsequent to the Reformation, and altogether six 
during the sixteenth century, were built on sites either obtained 
gratuitously or for an insignificant price. After this period only 
one College was founded— in 1610 ; and three of the eight Halls 
transmuted into Colleges, in 1610, 1702, and 1740 ; but of these 
one is now extinct. 



HISTORY OF DOMESTIC SUPERINTENDENCE. 467 

These circumstances explain in what manner the Halls declined; 
it remains to tell, why, in the most crowded state of the Univer- 
sity, not one has been subsequently restored. — Before the era of 
their downfall, the establishment of a Hall was easy. It required 
only that a few scholars should hire a house, find caution for a 
year's rent, and choose for principal a graduate of respectable 
character. The chancellor, or his deputy, could not refuse to 
sanction the establishment. An act of usurpation abolished this 
facility. The general right of nomination to the principality, 
and consequently to the institution of Halls, was, " through the 
absolute potency he had, procured by the Earl of Leicester," 
Chancellor of the University, about 1570 ; and it is now, by stat- 
ute, vested in his successors. In surrendering this privilege to 
the chancellor, the Colleges were not blind to their peculiar inter- 
est. From his situation, that magistrate was sure to be guided 
by their Heads : no Hall has since arisen to interfere with their 
monopoly ; and the collegial interest, thus left without a coun- 
terpoise, and concentrated in a few hands, was soon able to 
establish an absolute supremacy in the University. 

Having thus, in obedience to Bacon's precept, "reduced things 
to their first institution, and observed how they had degenerated :" 
we are in a condition " to take counsel of both times — of the 
ancienter time what is best, and of the later time what is fittest; 
to reform without bravery or scandal of former ages ; but yet, to 
set it down to ourselves as well to create good precedents as to 
follow them." 

Were the system of public education in the English Universi- 
ties recalled into being, raised to the perfection which it ought to 
obtain, and access to its benefits again opened to all ; — a greatly 
increased resort to Oxford and Cambridge would be the inevitable 
result. The Colleges and Halls hardly suffice at present ; — how 
then can additional numbers, without detriment, if not with ad- 
vantage, to the established discipline, be accommodated ? — Now, 
in answering this question, we may do so either generally — or in 
special reference to the Dissenters. But it is evident, that an 
expedient mode of solving the problem, is, if possible, to be de- 
vised, without taking religious differences into account. 

The only plan that has been proposed to obviate the difficulties 
which the actual, though illegal, merging of the public Univer- 
sity in the private Colleges presents to the admission of Dissenters, 
is to allow them to found a College or Colleges for themselves. — 



468 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

We strongly deprecate this plan. "We do not, of course, question 
the right of the Dissenters, if admitted to the University, of 
founding and endowing Colleges, nay of imposing what religious 
conditions they may choose, either on a participation in the en- 
dowments or on admission within the walls. But we regard the 
exercise of this right as inexpedient — even as detrimental, in the 
highest degree. To say nothing of its expense, and supposing 
always that such a measure might be carried into effect with far 
better means of furthering the ends of education than the old 
foundations, through their fellows, generally supply ; still it would 
accomplish nothing which may not be effected by much easier 
methods ; while it would contribute to entail a continuance of 
that sectarian bigotry and intolerance which, in this country, at 
present, equally disgraces the established and dissenting divisions 
of our common faith. By this proceeding, the exclusive spirit of 
the present colleges would be imitated, justified, exacerbated, and 
perpetuated ; and in the old Colleges and the new together, the 
Universities would become the nurseries and camps and battle 
fields of a ferocious and contemptible polemic : whereas, left to 
themselves, and to the influence of a more enlightened spirit, 
there is no doubt, but the ancient foundations will be gradually 
won over by the liberality of the age, and the charities of a 
common Christianity. We are confident, their disabilities being 
removed, and the means offered to the Dissenters of a University 
education, without any forced religious compliances, that they 
would never think of establishing for themselves collegiate foun- 
dations of a sectarian character ; and we are equally confident, 
that if this were not attempted by them, and did the accommoda- 
tion in the authorized houses of the University once exceed- in a 
degree the demand for admission, that the Colleges would be 
equally patent to such Dissenters as were not averse from their 
observances, as to members of the Established Church. And that 
such means may be easily afforded, without violating the consti- 
tutional discipline of the Universities, is manifest from the history 
we have previously given of the system of their domestic super- 
intendence. 

Without, therefore, proposing to dispense with domestic super- 
intendence altogether, as was originally the case in Oxford and 
Cambridge, and as has been always generally practiced in other 
Universities ; and without supposing the necessity of any ex- 
pensive foundations, or even of establishments that will not easily 



OBJECTION FROM RELIGIOUS DISCIPLINE. 469 

support themselves ; we think the difficulty may be overcome, 
by simply returning to the ancient practice of the English Uni- 
versities, in regard to the easy establishment of Halls or Hostels; 
under any new restrictions, however, that may be found proper 
to enhance their character and utility. — These Halls may be 
established under a double form. Either the Hall shall consist 
only of a single house, in which its head or principal (necessarily 
a graduate) resides ; or of a number of separate houses, each 
under the care of an inferior officer, bound to report to the prin- 
cipal all violations of rule. The advantage of the latter form 
would be its more moderate expense. The great benefits which 
this return to the natural system of the University would afford?, 
in breaking the detestable monopoly of the fellow-tutors — in 
presenting to merit a free and honorable field of competition — 
in retaining in the Universities men of distinguished learning and 
ability — in determining an improvement both of the public and 
private education— and in raising to a high pitch the standard of 
academic accomplishment ; these, and other advantages, we may 
probably take a more fitting opportunity of discussing. In refer* 
ence to our present question, this restoration of the Halls would, 
we think, obviate all difficulties in regard to the Dissenters, were 
the routine of morning and evening prayers, in conformity to the 
Liturgy, simply not rendered imperative in the new establish* 
ments ; of which, indeed, for the sake of religion itself, the olds 
ought, perhaps, to be relieved. — But on details we can not now 
enter ; and hasten to consider the other objections by which the 
measure for the admission of Dissenters has been principally 
opposed. 

1°, It is objected, that Universities in general, and the English 1 
Universities in particular, are not more places of literary and 
scientific instruction than places of religious education; that 
religion can be only taught on the doctrine of a single sect ; that' 
the dominant sect in the state must remain the dominant sect 
in the University ; consequently, Universities, and especially the 
English Universities, are not places into which Dissenters from 
the established faith ought either to wish, or should be allowed, 
to enter. 

This objection is of any cogency only from the miserable con- 
fusion in which it is involved. We must make two distinctions: 
— distinguish, firstly, the religious education given in the Publie 
University from the religious education afforded in the Private 



470 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

Colleges ; and, secondly, in the former, the professional instruc- 
tion in religion given to the future divine in the faculty of Theo- 
logy, from the liberal instruction in religion which may be given 
to all in the preliminary or general faculty of Arts. 

In so far as regards the University Proper, there is no diffi- 
culty whatever. We shall suppose this restored to life — to be as 
it has been, and ought to be. It will not be contended that, 
either in the English Universities, or in any University whatever, 
it was ever required or expected, if indeed allowed, that persons 
admitted for general education in arts, or for professional educa- 
tion in law or medicine, should attend the professional lectures 
delivered in the theological faculty. The theological faculty will 
always teach the doctrine of the establishment ; but none need 
attend its instruction besides those destined for the church : — nay, 
to the ineffable disgrace of the establishment and Universities, so 
far are Oxford and Cambridge from being pre-eminently relig- 
ious schools, that the Anglican is the one example in Christen- 
dom of a church, whose members are not prepared for their holy 
calling, by an academical course of education in the different 
branches of theology ; and the English are the only Universi- 
ties in the ivorld, in which such a course can not actually be ob- 
tained. The English clergyman is perhaps destitute of academ- 
ical education altogether ; but if he enjoys this advantage, " one 
fortnight" (to use the words of Professor Pusey), comprises 
the beginning and end of all the public instruction which any 
candidate for holy orders is required to attend, previously to 
entering upon his profession." Yet, though the London Univer- 
sity only omits, what the Church of England does not think it 
necessary to require of its ministers — a course of professional 
education in divinity — and though the London University ac- 
tually teaches what Oxford and Cambridge teach only in stat- 
ute ; yet the members of that church and of these Universities 
clamor against the incorporation of the London University, be- 
cause, forsooth, it does not fulfill the conditions which its name 
implies ! 

We may take this opportunity, by way of parenthesis, of say- 
ing a few words in exposition of the very general mistake in 
regard to the name and nature of a University ; — a mistake 
which threatens to become of serious practical importance, from 
the consequences that are now in the course of being deduced 
from it. University, in its academical application, is supposed 



MUST A UNIVERSITY COMPRISE THEOLOGY? 471 

to mean a University of sciences or faculties (scientiarum, facul- 
talum universitas). 

Pleased as we are with the candor of Mr. Sewell's confessions 
— " that the University of Oxford is not an enlightened body" — 
"that we (its members) have little liberality in religion" — and 
" study logic in a very humble way ;" we should hardly have 
been moved to a refutation of his opinion (founded on this inter- 
pretation of the word), that the " University of London," as ex- 
cluding theology from its course of studies, is unentitled to the 
name it has usurped. But when it has been seriously argued 
before the Privy Council by Sir Charles Wetherell, on behalf of 
the English Universities, as a ground for denying a charter to 
this institution, that the simple fact of the Crown incorporating 
an academy under the name of University, necessarily, and in 
spite of reservations, concedes to that academy the right of grant- 
ing all possible degrees ; nay, when (as we are informed) the 
case itself has actually occurred — the Durham University, in- 
advertently, it seems, incorporated under that title, being in the 
course of claiming the exercise of this very privilege as a right, 
necessarily involved in the public recognition of the name : — in 
these circumstances, we shall be pardoned a short excursus, in 
order to expose the futility of the basis on which this mighty edi 
fice is erected. 

Sir Charles Wetherell, after quoting the argument of Mr. At- 
torney-General Yorke, in the case of Dr. Bentley — (" The power 
of granting degrees flows from the Crown. If the Crown erects 
a University, the power of conferring degrees is incident to the 
grant. Some old degrees the Universities have abrogated, some 
new they have erected," &c.) inter alia, contends : — " The second 
point stated in Mr. Yorke's argument is equally material to be 
kept in view ; namely, that the. power of conferring degrees is 
incident to a University, and some particular remarks must be 
borrowed from it. Allusion was made the other day by Dr. 
Lushington to a passage stated in the Oxford petition, importing 
that they had been advised that it was matter of great doubt, 
whether a proviso in the charter, restricting this institution from 
conferring degrees in divinity, would be binding and effectual, 
and some surprise was expressed at it. That advice I gave, and 
I considered Mr. Attorney-General Yorke as my coadjutor in 
giving it, for it is founded upon his opinion. I understand that 
a charter is now asked for, to make a University, who are not to 



472 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

grant theological degrees. There is something very whimsical 
in this : for theological learning is, beyond all doubt, one of the 
main purposes and characteristics of a University. But, say 
these gentlemen (and their friends and advocates, at the Com- 
mon-Council at G-uildhall, said the same thing), to he sure it will 
be too had to have a University pretending to give degrees in 
theology, for we have neither 0eo? in the place, nor AoXos. The 
Deity and Revelation we intend not ourselves to recognize — we 
shall ask only for degrees in arts, law, surgery, and medicine. 
But even the surgical or medicinal degree is likely to he ampu- 
tated ; at present, at least, they have no means to confer it. In 
this state of things (independently of the general legal argument 
with which I have troubled your Lordships, to show that theol- 
ogy, according to the doctrines of the Church of England, must 
form a part of the instruction given in an institution which is to 
be established as a University), this question of law arises : — 
How can this anomalous and strange body be constituted in the 
manner professed ? It is to be a ' University? but degrees in 
theology it is not to give. But Mr. Attorney-Cxeneral Yorke tells 
us, that the power of giving degrees is incidental to the grant. 
If this be law, is not the power of conferring theological degrees 
equally incident to the grant, as other degrees ; and if this be so, 
how can you constitute a University without the power of giving 
' alV degrees ? The general rule of law undoubtedly is, that 
where a subject-matter is granted which has legal incidents be- 
longing to it, the incidents must follow the subject granted; and 
this is the general rule as to corporations ; and it has been de- 
cided upon that principle, that as a corporation, as an incident to 
its corporate character, has a right to dispose of its property, a 
proviso against alienation is void." ' 

We entertain great respect for the professional authority of Mr. 
Yorke and of Sir Charles "Wetherell ; and should not certainly 
have ventured to controvert that authority on any question of 
English law. But this is no such question. Here the cardinal 
point is the meaning of the word universitas, in its academical 
signification. But as the word was originally not of English but 
of European consuetude ; and as it will not be pretended that of 
old it had a different meaning as applied to Oxford and Cambridge 

1 " Substance of the speech of Sir Charles Wetherell before the Lords of the 
Privy Council, on the subject of incorporating the London University." London: 
1834, pp. 79-81. 



UNIVERSITY— MEANING OF THE TERM. 473 

(in which sense, the Crown in this country must he supposed in 
any new erection to employ the word), from what it expressed as 
applied to Paris or Bologna : consequently, the whole question 
resolves itself into one, to he determined, not hy English law (for 
there can be neither rule nor recent precedent in the case), hut 
by the analogies to be drawn from the history and charters of the 
ancient European Universities. And without research, dipping 
only into the academical documents nearest at hand, we shall find 
no difficulty in proving that University , in its proper and original 
meaning, denotes simply the whole members of a body (generally 
incorporated body) of persons teaching and learning one or more 
departments of knowledge ; and not an institution privileged to 
teach a determinate circle of sciences, and to grant certificates 
of proficiency (degrees) in any fixed and certain departments of 
that circle (faculties). 

The oldest word for an unexclusive institution of higher edu- 
cation was Studium, and Studium generate — terms employed in 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and retained in those which 
followed.- — The word universitas, in the common language of 
Rome, is equally applicable to persons and to things. In the 
technical language of the civil law, it was, in like manner, ap- 
plied to both. In the former signification (convertible with col- 
legium), it denoted a plurality of persons associated for a con- 
tinued purpose, and may be inadequately rendered by society,, 
company, corporation ; in the latter, it denoted a certain totality 
of individual things, constituted either by their mutual relation 
to a certain common end {tmiversitas facti), or by a mere legal 
fiction (tmiversitas juris).- — In the language of the middle ages, 
it was applied either loosely to any understood class of persons ; * 
or strictly (in the acceptation of the Roman law) to a public in- 
corporation, more especially (as equivalent with communitas) to 
the members of a municipality, 2 or to the members of "a general 
study." In this last application it was, however, not uniformly 
of the same amount ; and its meaning was, for a considerable 



1 For instance, in 1212, universitas vestra, applied by municipality of Oxford to 
" omnibus Christi fidelibus ;" and four years after, by the Papal Legate, to " omnibus 
Magistris et Scholaribus Oxonii commorantibus." In 1276, universitas vestra, ap- 
plied, in same deed, by Bishop of Ely, to " universis Christi fidelibus," and universitas., 
used as convertible with " universitas Regentium et Scholarium studentium Canta.- 
brigiae." 

2 See Du Cange and Carpentier in voce ; add Bulaeus, iv., p. 27. Fattorini, ii. p. 
57-58. It was freouently applied to the college of Canons in a cathedral. 



474 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

period, determined by the words with which it was connected. 
Thus, it was used to denote either (and this was its more usual 
meaning) the whole body of teachers and learners, 1 or the whole 
body of learners, 2 or the whole body of teachers and learners, 
divided either by faculty 3 or by country, 4 or by both together. 6 
But no one instance can, we are confident, be adduced, in which 
(we mean until its original and proper signification had been for- 
gotten") it is employed for a school teaching, or privileged to teach, 
and grant degrees, in all the faculties. As " communitas," which 
originally was employed only with the addition of " incolarum 
civitatis," or the like, came latterly, absolutely and by itself, to 
denote the whole members of a civic incorporation ; — so univer- 
sitas, at first currently employed as a convertible expression for 
"communitas," and in its academic application, always joined 
with " magistrorum et scholarium," or some such complementary 
term, came, during the fourteenth century, to be less frequently 
employed in the former signification; and in the latter meaning, 
to be used either simply by itself, or, for a time, frequently in 
combination with "studium," or " studium generale ;'" the other, 
and more ancient denomination — as, imiversitas studii Oxonien- 
sis, Parisiensis, &c. 8 — The oldest Universities arose spontaneously 

1 Paris. Bull, in 1209, Doctorum et Scholarium Universitas ; Bull, 1218, Doctorum 
et discipulorum U. ; University itself, 1221, U. Magistrorum et Scholarium; Henry 
III. of England, U. Scholarium; a history, 1225, U. Scholarium. — So Thoulouse in 
1233; Montpellier, 1289; Lisbon, 1290; Bologna, 1235. — Oxford. Matthew Paris, 
c. 1250, U. Scholarium, and passim; Royal Charter, 1255, U. Scholarium; Royal 
Letter, 1255, same; Royal Letters, 1286, same; Bull, 1300, U. Magistrorum, Doc- 
torum et Scholarium; University itself, 1312, U. Magistrorum ct Scholarium. — Cam- 
bridge. Royal Letter, 1268, U. Scholarium; Decree, 1276, U. Rcgenlium et Schol- 
arium. Universitas Studentium, occurs in Ross, c. 1486. 

2 In Bologna and Padua, the whole body of students were styled U. Scholarium 
(though at an ancient date, the term scholaris includes both teacher and learner). 

3 In Bologna and Padua the students, according to faculty, were divided into the 
U. Jurislarum, and U. Artistarum. We have before us the Staluta Almac Universi- 
tatis Juristarum Patavinorum. 4, 1550. 

4 In Bologna and Padua, the students, according to nations, were divided into U. 
Ultramontanorum, and U. Cismontanorum. 

5 In Padua, we have U. Juristarum Ultramontanorum, and U. Juristarum Cismon- 
tanorum; the U. Artistarum Ultramontanorum, and U. Artistarum Cismontanorum. 

6 Thus Halle (founded 1694) was styled Studiorum Universitas, a phrase equally 
erroneous as that applied to the new University of Frankfort — Publica Universitas. 

7 For example : — Paris. Bull, 1358 ; the University itself, in a letter, 1406. — 
Vienna. Charter, 1366; Bull, 1384.— Prague. Bull, 1347, and 1398.— Oxford. 
Bull, 1300. — Louvain. Bull, 1425. — Aberdeen. Bull, 1526, universitas studii gcn- 
eralis. 

8 The term, studium generale, in like manner, did not mean originally, that all 
was taught, but that what was taught, was taught to all. Oxford and Cambridge 
will thus only, by the abolition of the test, be restored to the rank of Universities. 



UNIVERSITY— MEANING OF THE TERM. 475 

during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The mighty crowds 
drawn from every country of Europe by an Irnerius to Bologna, 
or by an Abelard or a Lombardus to Paris, received at first local 
immunities, in order to fix the teachers and students in the 
towns, which well appreciated the advantages of this great resort; 
and the papal and royal privileges subsequently conceded, did not 
create the faculties which they then publicly protected. But by 
this public protection, the Universities became from that moment 
integral parts of the Church and State ; and, consequently could 
not, of their own authority, organize new faculties, 1 not in exist- 
ence at the date of their privileges. 

The University of Paris, like those of Oxford and Cambridge, 
at first existed only in the lay Faculty of Arts. On this faculty, 
these great Universities are founded, as in it alone they once 
existed ; and in the two latter, the higher faculties never, in fact, 
were separated, as in the continental schools, into independent 
corporations. In Paris, the faculties of Divinity, Canon Law, and 
Medicine subsequently arose ; but there was no faculty of Civil 
Law when Paris received its privileges; and it consequently 
neither could of itself create that faculty, nor, for certain reasons, 
was it able to obtain papal authorization so to do. But Paris, 
though thus without a principal faculty, was acknowledged over 



" Studia generalia" (says a great jurist of the sixteenth century, the dean of the juri- 
dical faculties in three Universities) — " Studia generalia, hodie, seu publica dicuntur, 
scholae, in quibus publice ex privilegio pontincis summi vel principis, vel antiqua 
consuetudine, cujus initii non extat memoria. studium est privilegiatum, et permissa 
societas et concursus scholasticorum et docentium ; continens pro contento. Potest 
dici studium generate et universitas ratione eadem, quod studia qua? ibi tractantur 
universis proposita sint et sint publica, et gratis, volentibus discere, proponantur ab 
institutis preceptoribus, sintque privilegia universis studentibus concessa. Neque 
ideo minus studia generalia dicentitr aut universitatcs, quod non omnes scicntiae ibi, sed 
certae tantum tractentur et doeeantur. Nam generalitas ad uiiiversitatem non pertinet 
scientiarum, sed ad publicam causam docendi : prout enim placuit iis qui instituerunt 
et erexerunt et privilegiarunt studia, scientiae et artes ibidem legi publice tantum de- 
bent, et si aliae legantur, non utuntur privilegiis quibus praescriptae docendae, et 
earum doctores et auditores utuntur et potiuntur. Non enim actus agentium operan- 
tur ultra illorum intentionem. (L. non omnis numeratio, de reb. credit. P.)" Petrus 
Gregorius Tholosanus Be Republica, Lib. xviii. c. 1, § 87. 

1 To understand the meaning of the word Faculty, it must be remembered that 
originally, in all the older Universities, a Degree conferred the right, nay, imposed 
the obligation, of teaching ; and a faculty was, after Universities had become public, 
the body of teachers or graduates, who not only had the privilege of lecturing on a 
certain department of knowledge, of examining and admitting candidates for degrees 
into their body, but also the right of making statutes, choosing officers, employing a 
seal, and of doing all that pertains to a privileged corporation. — In the Italian Uni- 
versities, the faculty was composed of the teachers and students together. There, 
indeed, the students were originally all in all. 



476 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

Europe, not only as a University, or general study, out the school 
above all others entitled to the name. Its title was, " the First 
School of the Church ;" and so little did the term universitas 
imply an academical encyclopaedia, and a full complement of 
faculties, that several of the most venerable Universities possessed, 
while in the zenith of their European fame, only a single faculty 
— as Salerno, the single faculty of medicine. 

Mr. Yorke is mistaken when he says — " Some old degrees the 
Universities (of Oxford and Cambridge) have abrogated, some 
new they have erected." The former clause of the sentence is 
true, in so far as these seminaries have allowed some (e. g., the 
minor degrees in grammar and logic) to fall into desuetude ; and 
the degrees in canon law, by command of the Crown, were dis- 
continued at the Reformation ; hut no new degree have they 
introduced, or attempted to introduce. The precedent thus al- 
leged, in confirmation of his principle, in fact disproves it. 

In like manner, in all the Universities throughout Europe, 
which were not merely privileged, but created by bull and char- 
ter, every liberty conferred was conferred not as an incident, 
through implication, but by express concession. And this in two 
ways: — For a University was empowered, either by an explicit 
grant of certain enumerated rights, or by bestowing on it im- 
plicitly the known privileges enjoyed by certain other pattern 
Universities. These modes were frequently conjoined ; but we 
make bold to say, that there is not to be found, throughout 
Europe, one example of a University erected without the grant 
of determinate privileges — far less of a University, thus erected, 
enjoying, through this omission, privileges of any, far less of every 
other. — In particular, the right of granting degrees, and that in 
how many faculties, must (in either way) be expressly conferred. 
The number of the faculties themselves is extremely indeterm- 
inate ; and, to many Universities and faculties, the right of con- 
ferring certain special degrees has been allowed, the possessors of 
which did not constitute a faculty at all. For example, the 
degrees in G-rammar, Logic, Poetry, Music, &c. It was the com- 
mon custom to erect a University in only certain faculties ; and 
not unfrequently a concession of the others was subsequently 
added. Thus — 

During the thirteenth century, Innocent IV. founded in, and 
migratory with, the court of Rome, a University of only two 
faculties — Theology, and the Laws, in one faculty — but with all 



UNIVERSITY— MEANING OF THE TERM. 477 

the privileges of a "Studium Grenerale." This was amplified, 
during the fourteenth century, with professorships of Hebrew, 
Chaldee, and Arabic ; and, finally, Eugenius IY. bestowed on it 
a complement of all the faculties. For this case we rely on 
Tholosanus. 

Pope Martin Y. erected, in 1425, the great University of Lou- 
vain, as a " Studium Grenerale," or " Universitas Studii," in the 
faculties of Arts, the Canon and Civil Laws (forming two facul- 
ties), and Medicine ; nor was it until some years thereafter (1431) 
that Eugenius IY. conceded to it the privilege of a fifth or Theo- 
logical faculty and promotions. This case we take from the 
Diplomat a themselves. 

Altdorf was, in 1578, erected by the Emperor, in favor of the 
free city of Nuremberg, into an academy of one faculty, that of 
Arts or Philosophy, with the right to that faculty of conferring 
its ordinary degrees of Bachelor and Master, but without the 
general rights and privileges of a University. In 1622, the 
Faculties of Law and Medicine were conceded, with all privileges; 
and the faculty of Arts also received the right almost peculiar 
to the University of Yienna of creating Poets Laureate. (The 
right of laureation conceded to the University of Yienna by Max- 
imilian I. in fact constituted what may be held a distinct faculty 
—a Collegium Poeticum.) 

Altdorf was now a privileged University (Academia Universa- 
lis, Studium Universale), and her graduates endowed with all the 
rights enjoyed by those of other Universities; Cologne, Yienna, 
Tubingen, Freiburg, Ingoldstadt, and Strasburg, are specially 
referred to. Her new diploma spoke only of promotions in the 
Medical and Juridical faculties ; but it did not prohibit them in 
Divinity. The notion, however, that the Senate of Nuremberg 
could, on such a charter, authorize a theological faculty in their 
University, was found "wholly groundless; as no state of the 
empire" (we quote the historian of the school) "was entitled to 
stretch the imperial privileges beyond the clear letter of the deed 
of incorporation, and its immediate and necessary consequences." 
— Accordingly, it was not until 1697, that the Senate succeeded 
in obtaining from the Emperor a confirmation of the privileges 
previously conceded, and their extension to a Theological faculty. 

Without entering on details, we may also add, that Rostoch 
was founded only in three faculties, the Juridical, Medical, and 
Philosophical; while Heidelberg, Prague, and, in general, the 



478 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

older Universities of Germany, had, like Paris and Alcala, no 
faculty of Civil Law, a faculty which was afterward granted by 
the competent authority. In like manner, Bamberg and Grratz 
had only two faculties, the Philosophical and Theological, until 
1739 and 1788, respectively ; when the Medical and Juridical 
were conceded ; and Duisburg has never, we believe, possessed 
more than the two former. A slight research would accumulate 
many additional examples [were it requisite, to refute an opinion 
which is disproved by the history of almost every University in 
Europe. It would, in fact, be idle to contend in this country, and 
at the present time, what seminary has or has not the privilege 
of granting degrees ; when degrees, as granted by most of the 
privileged seminaries themselves, are now so justly the objects of 
a rational contempt.] 

But to return from our digression : — The religion taught in its 
Professional Faculty can not thus interfere with the Dissenters ; 
but in the faculty of Arts or of Philosophy — in that fundamental 
faculty in which the individual, as an end unto himself, is liber- 
ally educated to the general development of his various capacities, 
as man and gentleman, and not as in the others, viewed as a mean, 
merely toward an end, ulterior to himself, and trained to certain 
special dexterities as a professional man ; — in this fundamental 
faculty is there no religion taught? — We are far from holding, 
that if this were possible, it ought not to be accomplished ; but we 
assert, and fear no contradiction, that by no University has it ever 
yet been attempted. After all the bigoted, hypocritical railing 
against the London University, for omitting religion in its course 
of general education ; in point of fact, that school omits only 
from necessity, what all Universities had previously omitted with- 
out. Let those who stand astounded at this assertion, adduce a 
single instance of any University, in which religious information 
constituted, or constitutes, an essential element of its course of 
instruction in the faculty of Arts. We are certain that such an 
instance out of England will not be found. The slightest acquaint- 
ance with the constitution and history of the European schools 
supplies the reason. At present, we are satisfied with merely 
stating the fact. And as the sphere of examination for its de- 
grees is necessarily correlative to the sphere of instruction by a 
faculty ; so, in no European faculty of Arts was Theology a 
subject on which its examinators had a right to question the can- 
didate. The only apparent exception is afforded by the English 



THE FACULTY OF ARTS DOES NOT TEACH THEOLOGY. 479 

Universities. And what is that ? It is an exception but of yes- 
terday ; after the constitution of the University Proper had been 
subverted ; its public instruction quashed ; and the one private 
tutor left to supply the place of the professorial body. In conse- 
quence of this revolution, some thirty years ago, candidates for 
the first degree were, in Oxford, subjected to an examination in 
the rudiments of religion and the contents of the Thirty-nine 
Articles ; and we believe that in Cambridge a certain acquaint- 
ance is required with Paley's Evidences and Butler's Analogy. 
Though contrary to all academical precedent, we have certainly 
no objection to the innovation. And when Dissenters are admitted, 
the only change required will be, not to make the Thirty-nine 
Articles a necessary subject of examination in Oxford. 

In so far, therefore, as the University Proper and its public 
instruction are concerned, the objection does not apply ; if it be 
relevant at all, it has reference only to the domestic education in 
the Colleges. And in this application, we are not disposed to 
deny it force. Estimated indeed, by any but the lowest standard, 
the religious discipline afforded in the Colleges of either Univer- 
sity is scanty and superficial in the extreme ; and the men, who, 
from their acquaintance with the theology of foreign Universi- 
ties, are the best qualified to estimate at its proper value what 
is accomplished in their own, are precisely those (we refer to Mr. 
Thirlwall and Mr. Pusey ) who speak of it with the most contempt. 
But insignificant as it now is, we are confident that a forcible 
introduction of the Dissenters would not only prevent its improve- 
ment, but tend to annihilate it altogether. 

But again, it is clamored : — By the removal of academic tests, 
the 7no st influential situations in the Universities may be filled 
with men, enemies not only of the established religion, but of re- 
ligion altogether. 

Look to the Universities of Germany : there we have " the 
practical effects'' 1 (says the Christian Advocate of Cambridge, 
who, not merely in honor of his office, must be allowed to lead 
the battle')—- " the practical effects of the system, where relig- 



1 " The Danger of Abrogating the Religious Tests and Subscriptions which are at 
present required from persons proceeding to Degrees in the Universities, considered, 
in a Letter to His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, K.G., Chancellor of the 
University of Cambridge. By George Pearson, B.D., Christian Advocate in the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge. Cambridge: 1834." — The same argument forms the principal 
staple of the pamphlet entitled, " The Cambridge Petition Examined ; or Reasons 
against admitting the Dissenters to Graduate in the Universities : Willi remarks on 



480 ENGLISH UN1VERS1T! IIS— ADMISSION OF DISSENTER',;. 

ious tests have been either virtually or actually abolished, or 
dispensed with altogether." — "In these learned institutions, I am 
not aware that any religious test is exacted before admission to 
degrees and professorships ; and before admission to holy orders 
and degrees in divinity, nothing more is required than a subscrip- 
tion to what are called the symbolical books of the Lutheran 
Church, and even to these, with this convenient qualification, as 
far as they agree with Holy Scripture; 'a qualification,' as 
it has been observed, ' which obviously bestows on the ministry 
the most perfect liberty of believing or teaching whatever their 
own fancy may suggest.' And the consequences of this latitude 
have been most fatal in their influence on the German Univer- 
sities and the Lutheran Church. Opinions have not only been 
maintained by the most eminent persons in these learned bodies, 
but have been openly propounded even from the Professorial 
chairs, which are entirely at variance with our belief of the in- 
spiration of the Holy Scriptures." 

Now, does Mr. Pearson, or his informant, Mr. Rose, imagine 
that subscription to the Symbolical Books (never, by the by, 
generally, received even in Lutheran Germany) was proposed 
" with this convenient qualification" of a quatenus, &c. ? This is 
merely the sense in which acquiescence to their doctrine is under- 
stood by the person subscribing ; — a sense which, it is contended 
by the most pious and orthodox divines, must by its very nature 
be involved in every Protestant obligation to religious conform- 
ity. We need only mention two — Spener the Pietist, and 
Reinhard, the most powerful champion of Supernaturalism. 
Melanchthon, himself the author of the two principal Symbolical 
Books, professes, as he practiced, that " articles of faith should 
be frequently changed, in conformity to times and circumstances." 
The German doctrine of Protestant subscription is not less appli- 
cable to the Thirty-nine Articles than to the Symbolical Books : 
and what is universal in the one country, may soon become no 
less prevalent in the other. This of itself is a powerful argument 
for the abolition of so frail a barrier — were that barrier in itself 
expedient. — Nay, in point of fact, this theory of subscription is 
the one virtually maintained by the most distinguished divines 



Clerical subscription, and the necessity of a Church Establishment. London : 1834 " 
— This argument also was strongly insisted on, among others, by the Earl of Caer- 
narvon and Mr. Goulburn, in their speeches on the question in the several Houses 
of Parliament. 






DO RELIGIOUS TESTS ENSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 481 

of the English Church and Universities. We shall quote only- 
one Anglican authority, but that one, on the question, worth a 
host of others. — Bishop Marsh, the learned Margaret Professor of 
Divinity in the University of Cambridge, and whom no one 
assuredly will suspect of aught but ultra reverence to the Church 
of England and her Articles, thus expounds the obligation of 
those who have not only subscribed these articles, but devoted 
themselves to minister at the altar : — "As our Liturgy and Arti- 
cles are avowedly founded on the Bible it is the special duty of 
those, who are set apart for the ministry, to compare them with 
the Bible, and see that their pretensions are ivell founded. But 
then our interpretation of the Bible must be conducted independ- 
ently of that, of which the truth is to be ascertained by it. Our 
interpretation of the Bible, therefore, must not be determined by 
religious system: and we must follow the example of our re- 
formers, who supplied the place of Tradition by Reason and 
Learning.''' 1 The italics are not ours. 

But to return to Mr. Pearson : — " For instance," says he, 
" Rosenmuller in the first edition of his ' Commentary on the 
Old Testament,' the most valuable in existence, perhaps, consid- 
ered as a critical and philological commentary on the Hebrew 
text, speaks of the Creation, the Fall, and the Deluge, as Fables." 
[Fable is a most unfair or a most ignorant conversion of Mythus. 
Mr. P. goes on) : — " He (Rosenmuller) describes the history of 
Jonah to be a mere repetition of the Mythus of Hercules, swal- 
lowed by a sea-serpent ; and he says that it was not written by 
Jonah, but by some one contemporary with Jeremiah ; and he 
considers the prophecy of Isaiah as made up by one writer out of 
the minor works of several others. Gresenius, the Professor of 
Theology at Halle, maintains after Paulus, Professor at Wurtz- 
burg, that the Pentateuch was composed after the time of Solo- 
mon, out of different fragments which were collected together." 
(Not Paulus, but Vater and De Wette, were, among the modern 
Grerman critics, the first and contemporaneous promulgators of 
the theory in regard to the compilation of the Pentateuch subse- 
quently to the kings of Israel ; and Eichhorn. after Astruc, was 
the first to maintain (what even Catholic divines, e. g. Jahn, ad- 
mit that he has made out) the fragmentary composition of Grene- 
sis, &c. Mr. P. goes on) : — " Bauer, in his introduction to the 
Old Testament, has a chapter on what he calls the Mythi or 
fables [fables again] of the Old Testament." (Bauer has not only 

Hh 



482 ENGLISH US IVE G sfTlKS— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

a Chapter, but a famous Book in two volumes, now more than 
thirty years old, entitled, " Hebrew Mythology of the Old and 
New Testaments" &c. Mr. P. proceeds) :— " Bretschneider re- 
jects the Gospel of St. John, as the work of a Gentile Christian 
of the second century." (Bretschneider did not reject, but only 
proposed for discussion, Probabilia against it ; and he has since 
candidly admitted his tentative to have been satisfactorily refut- 
ed. Mr. P. concludes) : — " Eichhorn pronounces the Revelations 
to be a drama representing the fall of Judaism and Paganism ; 
while Semler condemned it entirely as the work of a fanatic." 

Our present argument does not require us to enter on the 
merits or demerits of the German Theology ; on his knowledge 
of which we, certainly, can not compliment the Christian Advo- 
cate of Cambridge. But we have no objection whatever that he 
should make his bugbear look as black and grisly as he can ; we 
shall even hold it to be a veritable Goblin. Still, admitting his 
premises, we shall show that there is no consequence in his con- 
clusion. 

In the first place, Mr. Pearson assumes the whole matter in 
dispute, and that not only without, but against experience. — 
Admitting all that he asserts in regard to the character of Ger- 
man theology, yet to render this admission available to him, he 
was bound to show that this character was the natural, at least 
ordinary, consequence of the removal of academic tests ; by 
proving — 1°, that there was no other cause in the circumstances 
of Germany which might account for the phenomenon ; and 2°, 
that the same phenomenon had occurred in all, other countries 
where the same academic liberty had been permitted. He at- 
tempts to prove neither, but assumes both. — Yet in regard to 
the first, it could easily be established, by demonstrating the real 
causes of the theological revolution in Protestant Germany — 
that the relaxation of academic tests had no influence whatever 
in its production. — And in regard to the second, it is sufficient to 
say, that no Universities, except the English, have ever denied 
their education and degrees to the members of every sect ; and 
that in many, even of Catholic and Italian Universities, professor- 
ships in all the faculties, except the theological, were open to the 
partisans of different faiths ; and this too for centuries before 
such liberality was even dreamt of in the ultramontane and Ger- 
man Universities. But did the alleged consequence ensue ? That, 
no one can maintain. Indeed, the exclusive reference to the Ger- 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS INSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 483 

man Universities, is of itself an implicit admission, that the expe- 
rience of the other European Universities, equally emancipated 
from religious restrictions, is in contradiction to the line of argu- 
ment attempted. We may mention, that so little has Holland, 
a country at once intelligent and orthodox, heen convinced of the 
evil consequence of academic freedom, that it has recently dis- 
pensed with the signature of the Confession of Dordrecht, to 
which all public teachers were hitherto obliged ; and Leyden 
now actually boasts of Catholic Professors as ornaments of her 
Calvinist School. 

In the second place, all the examples of dangerous doctrine 
which Mr. Pearson alleges are from the works of members of the 
theological faculty in the G-erman Universities ; but admission 
into that faculty was never proposed, nor dreamt of, in the English 
Universities, without the former test. The instances have, there- 
fore, no relevancy. In point of fact, those who know any thing 
of the progress of philosophy and theology in Germany, know 
this : — that the rationalism of the theologians has been not a lit- 
tle checked and scandalized by the supernaturalism of the philos- 
ophers. 1 "Were we logicians like the Advocate, we might, from this 
phenomenon contend, that religious tests are the means of causing 
infidelity ; the German theologians being alone compelled to sub- 
scribe to the confessions of the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches. 

But, in the third place, to bear upon the question, it is, and 
must be, presumed, that the alleged licentious speculation is the 
effect of the removal of all imposed fetters on the full exercise of 
religious inquiry. Yet that this is the natural result of a vigor- 
ous and unimpeded Protestantism, Mr. Pearson does not admit. 
" Such opinions as these are not the natural produce of the 
German Universities — the cradle of the Reformation — spots con- 
secrated by the recollections of men, ' whose praise is in all the 
churches,' and whose names live in the pages of history among 
the greatest benefactors of mankind ! But in these very places 
have we seen opinions advanced, which are opposed to the funda- 
mental doctrines of the revealed will of God !" — In a subsequent 
page, he actually makes it a weighty matter of reproach against 



1 [See (instar omnium) the treatise " De Miraculis enchiridion," &c. The author, 
Christian Frederic Boehme. is or was a distinguished theologian, latterly Pastor and 
Inspector of Luckau. He maintains, that miracles are impossible, are not even con- 
ceivable ; and though, otherwise, a Kantian, impugns Kant, Fichte, and the German 
philosophers, for assorting a more orthodox doctrine.] 



484 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

the London University, that Professor Muehlenfels, in an " Intro- 
duction to a Course of German Literature" should " speak of 
(Luther) the champion of our faith, merely as an historical and 
literary personage." 

"We are afraid, however, that the Christian Advocate is hardly 
better versed in the works of the " champion of our faith," than 
in those of the men whom he holdly represents as its most for- 
midable antagonists. "We can easily show, even to Mr, Pearson's 
own contentment, that there is hardly an obnoxious doctrine to 
be found among the modern Lutherans, which has not its war- 
rant and example in the writings of Luther himself; and admit- 
ting this, even the Advocate, we think, would deem it idle to 
explain, by so far-fetched and inadequate an hypothesis as the 
want of academic tests, what is nothing more than the natural 
exercise of that license, vindicated, not surely to himself exclu- 
sively, by the " great champion of our faith." " Idemne licuit," 
says Tertullian, " Valentinianis quod Yalentino ; idemne Marci- 
onitis quod Marcioni : — de arbitrio suo fidem innovare ?" The 
following hasty anthology of some of Luther's opinions, and, in 
his own words, literally translated, may render it doubtful, 
whether the heresies of his followers are to be traced no higher 
than to the relaxation (not a century old) of religious tests. [We 
must not, however, set down Luther for a rationalist, howbeit 
the rationalists may adduce Luther's practice as the precedent of 
their own. For, while far from erring through, any overweening 
reliance on the powers of human reason in general, still Luther 
was betrayed into corresponding extravagancies by an assurance 
of his personal inspiration, of which he was, indeed, no less con- 
fident than of his ability to perform miracles. He disclaimed 
the Pope, he spurned the Church, but varying in almost all else, 
he never doubted of his own infallibility. He thus piously re- 
garded himself, as the authoritative judge, both of the meaning, 
and of the authenticity, of Scripture. — And though it is our duty, 
in refuting an untenable hypothesis, to allege various untenable 
opinions of the great reformer ; so far from entertaining any dis- 
like of Luther, we admire him, with all his aberrations, as one 
of the ablest and best of mankind. Only, in renouncing, with 
Luther, the Pope, we are certainly not willing to make a Pope 
of Luther.] 1 

1 [In stating the truth regarding Luther, I should regret to be thought by any, to 
mtter aught in disparagement of Protestantism. Protestantism is not the doctrine of 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS INSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 485 

Speculative Theology* " God pleaseth you when he crowns 
the unworthy ; he ought not to displease you when he damns the 
innocent." [Jena Latin, iii. f. 207.] — "All things take place by 

this or that individual Protestant ; and with reference even to the man Luther, I am 

sorry that it is here incumbent on me, to notice his faults without dwelling on his 

virtues. That what is now to be alleged, should not long ago have been familiar to 

all, only shows that Church History has not yet been written as alone written it ought 

to be — with truth, knowledge, and impartiality. Church History, falsely written, is 

a school of vain glory, hatred, and uncharitableness ; truly written, it is a discipline 

of humility, of charity, of mutual love. Written in a veracious and unsectarian spirit, 

every religious community is herein taught, that it has cause enough to blush for its 

adherents, 

("Iliacos intra muros peccatur et extra ;") 

and that others, though none be perfect, are all entitled to respect, as all reflections, 
though partial reflections, of the truth. Ecclesiastical History, indeed, may and ought 
to be the one best, as the one unexclusive application, of religious principle to practice 
— at once Catholic and Protestant and Christian : vindicating for the Church at large 
its inheritance of authority ; manifesting the fallibility of all human agents, and not 
substituting merely one papacy for another; while yielding " Christ the truth," as its 
last and dominant result.] 

1 [In regard to the testimonies from Luther under this first head I must make a 
confession. There are few things to which I feel a greater repugnance, than relying 
upon quotations at second hand. Now, those under this head were not taken imme- 
diately from Luther's treatise De Servo Arbitrio. I had, indeed, more than once read 
that remarkable work, and once attentively, marking, as is my wont, the more import- 
ant passages ; but at the time of writing this article, my copy was out of immediate 
reach, and the press being urgent, I had no leisure for a reperusal. In these circum- 
stances, finding that the extracts in Theoduls Gastmahl corresponded, so far as they 
went, with those given by Bossuet, and as, from my own recollection (and the testi- 
mony, I think, of Werdermann), they fairly represented Luther's doctrine ; I literally 
translated the passages, even in their order, as given by Von Stark (and in Dr. Kent- 
singer's French version). Stark, I indeed now think, had Bossuet in his eye. I deem 
it right to make this avowal, and to acknowledge, that I did what I account wrong. — 
But again I have no hesitation, in now deliberately saying, that I think Luther's doc 
trine of the Will is not misrepresented in these extracts ; nor is the impression which 
they leave, harsher than that made by a fair summary of the work in question, even 
by zealous Lutheran divines, The following is taken from a Consilium of the Theo- 
logical Faculty of Rostock, addressed (in 1595) to the Theological Faculty of Wittem- 
berg, and given by Walch in his works of Luther (xviii. 130). The learned Divine, 
Historian and Philosopher, David Chytraeus, was the penman. 

" You are aware, that at the commencement of the religious Reformation, and in 
your own ecclesiastical metropolis of Wittemberg, established by Luther some seventy 
years ago, when the Liberty of the human Will was strenuously attacked, there were 
many points of this very doctrine of Predestination made matter of revolting contro- 
versy and assertion. To wit : — That the divine predestination is the denial of all 
liberty of will to man, both in external operation and in internal thought ; — That all 
things take place by necessity, and an absolute necessity, so that as the poet speaks 
— ' certa stant omnia lege ;' — That there is no contingency in human affairs ; — That 
whatever God foresees, that he wills ; — That Pharaoh was hardened, not by the per- 
mission, but by the efficacious action of God. Through six consecutive pages it is 
maintained, that the declaration — ' I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but 
that the wicked may turn from his way and live,' is the voice of the revealed, God ; 
but that there is another judgment of the concealed God, who wills that Pharaoh should 
perish." — To the same effect, Walch gives various quotations from Calixtus, the 
greatest perhaps of all Lutheran divines ; and if Luther (what I think he did) did not 



486 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

the eternal and invariable will of God, who [which] blasts and 
shatters in pieces the freedom of the will." [F. 165.] — " G-od 
creates in us the evil, in like manner as the good." [F. 170, f. 



explicitly abandon his older doctrine on the point, this was at least openly done, in 
Luther's lifetime, and without Luther's reclamation, by Melanchthon. 

Though I refrain from here enlarging on the subject, I shall add one passage of 
Luther himself, which, in a few words, significantly expresses the Manichean charac- 
ter of his doctrine of the human will and its relations, as maintained in his treatise 
De Servo Arbitrio. 

" Thus the human will rests indifferent between the contending parties. Like a 
hackney, if mounted by God, it wills and wends whithersoever God may will ; if mount- 
ed by Satan, it wills and wends whithersoever Satan may will : neither hath it any lib- 
erty of choice to which of the two riders it shall run, which it shall affect ; but the 
riders themselves contend for its acquisition and possession." (Jena Latin, iii. f. 171.) 

In this note, I have spoken of Bossuet, signifying my reliance on the accuracy of 
his quotations ; and I am as fully convinced of his learning as a theologian, as of the 
greatness of his genius. Archdeacon Hare (who has done me the honor to devote 
seventy-five ample pages of an excursus appended to his Mission of the Comforter, in 
refutation of my statements touching Luther, a refutation which, as far as necessary, 
I shall consider in the sequel) — Mr. Hare never loses an opportunity of attacking, 
after his fashion, " the eagle of Meaux ;" — " impar congressus Achilli." Indeed, to 
speak more accurately, our assailant usually combats only a phantom of his own ; the 
Archdeacon rarely understands the Bishop. An excellent example of this is exhibited, 
when Mr. Hare makes his first and principal attack on Bossuet (p. 664, sq.); and here, 
in place of the triumph which he so loudly sounds, from a total unacquaintance with 
Luther's great doctrine of Assurance, Mr. Hare only shows how utterly he miscon- 
ceives the import of Bossuet's criticism of the Reformer. As this is an important, 
and, at the same time, an ill understood matter, I may be allowed a few words in ex 
planation. 

Assurance, personal assurance (the feeling of certainty that God is propitious to 
me — that my sins are forgiven, Fiducia, Plcrophoria fidei), was long universally held 
in the Protestant communities to be the criterion and condition of a true or saving 
Faith. Luther declares, that he who hath not assurance spews faith out ; and Melanch- 
thon makes assurance the discriminating line of Christianity from heathenism. It 
was maintained by Calvin, nay even by Arminius ; and is part and parcel of all the 
Confessions of all the Churches of the Reformation down to the Westminster Assem- 
bly. In that Synod Assurance was, in Protestantism, for the first time declared, not 
to be of the essence of Faith : and accordingly, the Scottish General Assembly has, 
subsequently, once and again, condemned and deposed the holders of this, the doc- 
trine of Luther, of Calvin, and of the older Scottish Church itself. In the English, 
and, more articulately, in the Irish, Establishment, it still stands a necessary tenet of 
belief. Assurance is now, however, disavowed, when apprehended, by Anglican 
Churchmen high and low ; but of these many, like Mr. Hare, are blessfully incogni- 
zant of the opinion, its import, its history, and even its name. 

This dogma, with its fortune, past and present, affords indeed a series of the most 
curious contrasts. It is curious, that this cardinal point of Luther's doctrine should, 
without exception, have been constituted into the fundamental principle of all the 
Churches of the Reformation, and as their common and uncatholic doctrine, have been 
explicitly condemned at Trent. It is curious, that this common doctrine of the 
Churches of the Reformation, should now be abandoned virtually in, or formally by, 
all these Churches themselves. It is curious, that Protestants should now generally 
profess the counter doctrine, asserted at Trent in the condemnation of their own prin- 
ciple. It is curious, that this the most important variation in the faith of Protestants, 
as, in fact, a gravitation of Protestantism back toward Catholicity, should have been 
overlooked, as indeed in his days undeveloped, by the keen-eyed author of " The his- 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS INSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 487 

216.] — " The high perfection of faith, is to believe that (rod is 
just, notwithstanding that, by his will he renders us necessarily 
damnable, and seerneth to find pleasure in the torments of the 
miserable." [F. 171. — All from the treatise De Servo Arbi- 
trio.] l 

tory of the Variations of the Protestant Churches." Finally, it is curious, that, though 
now fully developed, this central approximation of Protestantism to Catholicity should 
not, as far as I know, have been signalized by any theologian, Protestant or Catholic ; 
while the Protestant symbol (Fides sola justificat, Faith alone justifies), though now 
eviscerated of its real import, and now only manifesting a difference of expression, is 
still supposed to discriminate the two religious denominations. For both agree, that 
the three heavenly virtues must all concur to salvation ; and they only differ, whether 
Faith, as a word, does or does not involve Hope and Charity. This misprision would 
have been avoided had Luther and Calvin only said — Fiducia sola justificat, Assurance 
alone justifies ; for on their doctrine, Assurance was convertible with true Faith, and 
true Faith implied the other Christian graces. But this primary and peculiar doc- 
trine of the Reformation is now harmoniously condemned by Catholics and Protestants 
together. 

As to the Archdeacon, he only adds to this curious series. For it is curious, that 
Mr. Hare should reprehend Bossuet for " grossly misrepresenting" Luther, while Mr. 
Hare, misunderstanding, only " grossly misrepresents" Bossuet. And it is curious, 
that Mr. Hare should reproach Bossuet, for attributing to Luther, what is, in fact, the 
very cardinal point of Luther's doctrine. — Such is the first of the Archdeacon's polem- 
ical exploits, and the sequel of his warfare is not out of keeping with the commence- 
ment. ] , 

1 [Mr. Hare's observations under this head of Speculative Theology (p. 807-812), 
exhibit curious specimens of inconsistency, bad faith, and exquisite error. I shall 
adduce instances of each. 

Inconsistency. — There are several others, but to take only a single example. Mr. 
Hare, on the one haud, thus concludes his observations upon this head : — " What a 
testimony is it to the soundness of Luther's doctrines, that this knot of garbled sen- 
tences, thus twisted and strained from their meaning, are all that so unscrupulous an 
enemy (!) has been able to scrape together against him, under the head of Speculative 
Theology !" On the other hand, in the page immediately preceding, Mr. Hare as- 
serts, that this " so unscrupulous enemy" had "never set eyes on the original Latin 
of any one of these four sentences" — all that he had "been able to scrape together" 
being copied from " one page of Bossuet." Mr. Hare apparently does not think with 
the more logical Schiller — 

" Self-contradiction is the sin of sins." 

Bad faith. — Mr. Hare states, that the passages in question are taken from Bossuet ; 
and, at the same time, he parades his own familiarity with the works of Luther, in 
the discovery of these hidden fragments in the writings of the reformer. " We may 
guess," he says, " that the quotation comes from the Treatise De Servo Arbitrio," be- 
cause, &c. ; and after stating that the sentences of the quotation " seem to form one 
continuous passage," he adds — "but when we look through that treatise, we discover, 
to our surprise, that they are culled from various parts of it," &c. ; then he charitably 
admits — "I dare say the Reviewer himself did not know this ;" and finally concludes 
by informing the " perhaps thankful" Reviewer of the different pages of the third vol- 
ume of the Jena [Latin] edition, on which " he will find" them. Now, can it be be- 
lieved that there could have been no " guessing" in the case, no "discovery," and no 
" surprise ;" that the Venerable Archdeacon could not have thought, whatever he may 
" say, that the Reviewer did not know this," and would be "thankful" for the inform- 
ation so graciously vouchsafed toward "finding" and "seeing the originals of his quo- 
tation'-" Instead of the active development of erudition and ingenuity, which he here 
pretends, the Archdeacon, in truth, only passively followed, though industriously con- 



488 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

cealing, the references of Bossuet. Bossuct states the treatise, and articulately mark';, 
for each several quotation, the page and volume of the Wittemberg Latin edition of 
Luther's works ; and this, being given, the corresponding page of every other edition 
is at once shown by Walch's comparative table ; — a table of which Mr. Hare acknowl- 
edges the possession. On the other hand, where Bossuet, on one occasion, forgets a 
reference, there we forthwith rind the Archdeacon at fault. In point of fact, our 
champion of Luther exhibits on this, as indeed on every occasion, his ignorance, 
among others, of Luther's, perhaps, greatest work, his knowledge of it being confined 
to a dipping into this or that passage by the aid of references, which he thinks it not 
improper carefully to suppress. And yet this Venerable and veracious Churchman 
does not scruple to accuse of u falsehood '," those who would deem themselves disgraced, 
had they been guilty, even in thought, of a similar disingenuousnass, howbeit not in 
danger of being ignominiously plucked for so contemptible a daw-dressing. 

Elaborate error. — The whole tenor of Mr. Hare's criticism shows, not only that he 
is, specially, unacquainted with the contents and purport of the book on the Bondage 
of the Will, but that he is, generally, incapable of following and accepting truth, for 
its own sake. He is only a one-sided advocate — an advocate from personal feelings ; 
and, as such, his arguments are weak as they are wordy. I can afford to give only a 
single specimen of this, and I select the shortest. — Luther says: — "Hie est fidei 

summus gradus, credere ilium esse justum, qui sua vohintatc nos necessario 

damnabiles facit." These words might be supposed plain enough ; but the following 

is Mr. Hare's version : " This is the highest pitch of faith to believe in the 

justice of God, who by His will creates us, though by the necessity of our fallen na- 
ture we become inevitably subject to condemnation, without the special help of His 
Spirit." Here it is evident that Luther's meaning is wholly changed — the purport of 
his statement being, in fact, reversed. Luther says, and intended to say, that " God 
by His will makes us necessarily damnable ;" that is, that the quality of damnability 
in us is necessary, and necessary, through the agency of His will. This meaning, I 
make bold to say, no one but Mr. Hare ever thought of disallowing ; and this alone is 
the meaning in conformity with the whole analogy of Luther's treatise. And so ac- 
cordingly Bossuet converts the clause — " quoiqu'il nous rende necessairement dam- 
nables par sa volonte." This Mr. Hare declares a " mistranslation" by which he 
charitably admits that " Bossuet may relieve the Reviewer from a part of his guilt !" 
But in this guilt all the world, with exception of the Archdeacon, is participant. Let 
us look into any version of this work of Luther — and the two at hand chance to be 
of these the first and the last. — The first is that of Justus Jonas, the friend and coad- 
jutor of Luther, a version published almost immediately after the original And he- 
is guilty. The opinion of Jonas upon the subject is, indeed, expressed in the very 
title of his translation : — " Dass der freye Wille nichts set/' (" That free will is a nul- 
lity") His rendering of the clause in question is as follows : — " glauben, dass der 
Gott gleichwol der gerechteste sey, dess Wille also stehet, dass ctliche muessen ver- 
dammt werden." The last is by the Rev. Mr. Vaughan, who, like Mr. Hare himself, 
was " sometime Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge," and he thus guiltily translates 
the clause : — " to believe Him just, who of his own will makes us necessary objects of 
damnation." And the relative note, Mr. Vaughan says : " This necessity is not blind 
fate, but arises out of the appointments, arrangements, and operations of God's coun- 
seled will." Finally — though this be wholly superfluous — to refer to the German 
theological philosophers, they also arc guilty. Werdermann, who may represent all, 
states it in his Theodicee {the guilty criminal!) as Luther's doctrine : — " Faith can 
and must hold God, not only for just but merciful, were He even to damn all men 
without exception ;" and : — " God's prescience and man's free will are mutual con- 
traries, like fire and water." (hi. 138.) 

Such is a sample of the laborious blundering, by which "the Megalander" is to be 
clipped down to the shape and dimensions of Mr. Hare's model of propriety. The 
Reformer, here as elsewhere, is made to say one thing (so understood by all), to mean, 
and to mean to say, another (so understood by Mr. Hare alone). But, was Luther an 
idiot 1 — weaker than a dotard in thought, weaker than an infant in expression? Lu- 
ther, than whom no one ever thought more clearly, no one ever expressed his thought 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS INSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 489 

Practical Theology. 1 — "We," (Martin Luther, Philippus Me- 
lanchthon, Martin Bucer, Dionysius Melander, John Lening, 

less ambiguously or with greater force 1 — The Reformer is, assuredly, not fortunate 
in his defender : and unhappily for Mr. Hare himself, his Christian charity does not 
redeem the defects of his logic and his learning. 

I must not, however, here forget to acknowledge an error, or rather an inadvertence 
of mine, which has afforded a ground for Mr. Hare to make, as usual, a futile charge 
against Bossuet. In the second of the above extracts, not having Luther's original 
before me, I had referred the relative pronoun to " God," whereas it should have been 
to " the will of God." In the versions of Stark and Bossuet, from the nature of their 
vernacular, it is ambiguous, and I applied it wrongly. The matter is of the smallest ; 
but as Mr. Hare has dealt with it as of consequence, he should not have asserted that 
Bossuet was in meaning (and intentionally) different from Luther.] 

1 [On this head I can not here enter ; nor is there need. In his fifty pages of 
dense typography and "prolix garrulity," though Mr. Hare has not been able to 
shake (for he has not touched) even one of my statements ; he has succeeded admir- 
ably in manifesting his own — not singular, but common — ignorance of the whole mat- 
ter. Yet in the presumption of this common ignorance, Mr. Hare has not hesitated 
to scatter reproaches and insinuate calumnies, of which, by a righteous retribution, 
he has, in fact, been doomed to feel the injustice himself. — In a moral relation, per- 
haps, more than in any other, the history of Luther and the Reformation has been 
written, only as a conventional romance ; and I know not, whether Catholics or 
Protestants have wandered the widest from the line of truth. Of the following gen- 
eral facts I hold superfluous proof. 

1°, That after the religious revolution in Protestant Germany, there began and 
long prevailed a fearful dissolution of morals. The burthen of Luther's lamentation 
is : " Under the Papacy, we were bad, but under the Gospel, we are seven — yea more 
than seven times worse." 

2°, That of this moral corruption there were two principal foci — Wittemberg and 
Hesse. — Shortly before his death, Luther abandoning, calls Wittemberg " a Sodom ;" 
and not long after it, Wittemberg is publicly branded by Simon Musseus, the Pro- 
fessor of Theology and Superintendent of Jena, as " fcetida cloaca Diaboli." — Touch- 
ing Hesse, the celebrated Walther, writing to Bullinger, before the middle of the 
century, says of its centre of learning and religious education : " In Marburg the rule 
of morals is such, as Bacchus would prescribe to his Msenads, and Venus to her 
Cupids ;" while from Marburg and the chief chair of Theology in that University, the 
immorality of the natives had previously determined the pious Lambert of Avignon to 
fly, his flight being only arrested by his sudden death. 

3°, The cause of this demoralization is not to be sought for in the religious revolu- 
tion itself; for in Switzerland and other countries the religious revolution resulted in 
an increased sobriety and continence. In Protestant Germany, and particularly in 
Saxony, we need look no farther than to the moral doctrine of the divines ; 

" Hoc fonte derivata clades 

In patriam populumque fiuxit :" 

but in Hesse, beside that influence, we must take into account the pattern of manners 
set to his subjects by the prince ; 

" Regis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis." 
4°, As to Polygamy in particular, which not only Luther, Melanchthon, and Bucer, 
the three leaders of the German Reformation, speculatively adopted — but to which 
above a dozen distinguished divines among the Reformers stood formally committed ; 
there were two principal causes Which disinclined the theologians to a practical ap- 
plication of the theory. — The first of these, which operated more especially on Luther 
and Melanchthon, was the opposition it was sure of encountering from the Princes 
of both branches of the house of Saxony. — The second, that the doctrine itself was 
taken up and carried out to every extreme by odious sects and odious divines ; in a 
word, it became fly-blown. The Sacramentarian Carlstadt's public adoption of it, 



490 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

Antonius Corvinus, Adam Kraft, or of Ftilda, Justus Winther, 

tended principally to disgust Luther, and in a less degree Melanchthon ; for Carlstadt's 
doctrines were, in the mass, an abomination to these two reformers ; but the polyga- 
mist excesses of the hated Anabaptists, in the last season of their reign in Munster, 
revolted all rational minds ; and, as I said (what Mr. Hare strangely misunderstands), 
homceopathically broke the force of the epidemic throughout Germany and Europe. 

Specially : the Landgrave's bigamy has been mistaken in its more essential circum- 
stances, from a want of the requisite information, both by Protestant and Catholic 
writers ; and by none more than by the recent editor of the Corpus Reformatorum, 
Dr. Brctschneider. Touching this transaction, I shall now state in general a few of 
the more necessary facts ; of which, however startling, I have irrecusable proof — 
proof which, before long, I hope fully to detail, as indeed I ought ere this to have 
done. 

The sanction of Luther and Melanchthon to the Landgrave's second marriage was 
compelled. Prudentially, and for special reasons which I shall not now enumerate, 
they were strongly averse from this proceeding, on the part of that Prince ; but on 
principle, they, unfortunately, could not oppose it. They had both promulgated 
opinions in favor of polygamy, to the extent of vindicating to the spiritual minister a 
right of private dispensation, and to the temporal magistrate the right of establishing the 
practice, if he chose, by public law. They had even tendered (what is unknown to 
all English historians), their counsel to Henry VIII. , advising him, in his own case, 
to a plurality of wives. Without, however, showing at present how the screw was 
actually applied, I may notice generally, that their acquiescence was extorted, through 
Martin Bucer, a reformer and man of genius only inferior to themselves ; while the 
proceeding of the Landgrave was principally encouraged, and the scruples of the 
second Landgravine overcome, by the two court preachers, the two courtly chaplains, 
Dionysius Melander and John Lening. These three divines, apart from the Prince, 
were the prime movers in this scandalous affair ; and in contrast to them, Luther and 
Melanchthon certainly show in favorable relief. 

Bucer, who had previously merited from Luther the character of " lying varlet," 
consistently displays himself in the sequel of this business as guilty of mendacity in 
every possible degree. 

Melander did not belie his name of Dionysius ; for though an eloquent preacher, 
and "the Reformer of Frankfort," he was as worthy a minister of Bacchus, as an un- 
worthy minister of Christ, professing as he did, that he lived and wished to live only 
for the taste of wine. Neither shall we marvel how a Protestant Bishop, Super- 
intendent, Inspector, like Melander, could bestow the spiritual benediction on his 
master's bigamy ; when aware of the still higher marvel that Melander, the Inspector, 
Superintendent, Protestant Metropolitan of Hesse, was, at and before the time, him- 
self a trigamist, that is, to avoid all possible ambiguity, the husband of three wives at 
once. The Prince thus followed at a distance, not only the precept, but the example 
of the Pastor. 

Lening, or Leno Lening, as he was called, seems, with both learning and ability, 
to have been a Pandarus and Caliban in one ; so that the epithets of " monster," &c. 
applied to him by Luther and Melanchthon, suited indifferently his deformities both 
of mind and body. The Pastor of Melsingen, who, as Melanchthon informs us, was, 
like his Prince, a syphilitic saint, undertook the congenial task of converting Margaret 
von der Sahl to the faith of polygamy ; and the precious book which, on the occasion, 
he composed and sanctimoniously addressed to that " virtuous Lady and beloved sister 
in Christ," is still extant. If an adulterer, Lening does not appear, like his fellow- 
laborer Melander, to have been, in practice, at least, a simultaneous polygamist ; but 
when left a veteran widower, of more than seventy, the " Carthusian monster" incon- 
tinently married a nursery girl from the household of his pervert, the " left Land- 
gravine," and keeper of her eighth child. 

With such precept and such example, we shall not be surprised, that the Hessian 
morals became soon notoriously the most corrupt in Germany, I ought, perhaps, to 
say, in Christendom.] 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS INSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 491 

Balthasar Raida, 1 ) "can not advise that the license of marrying 
more wives than one be publicly introduced, and, as it were, 
ratified by law. If any thing were allowed to get into print on 
this head, your Highness" (Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, champion 
of the Reformation, who, having lost, as he pleads, conceit of his 
wife, being touched with scruples of conscience at his adultery, 
but which he [thrice] admits that " he does not wish to abstain 
from" and "knowing," as he tells themselves, "of Luther and 
Melanchthon having exhorted the King of England not to divorce 
his first queen, but to marry a second over and above," — had ap- 
plied to the leading doctors of the Reformation for license to have 
another wife) — "your Highness easily comprehends that it would 
be understood and received as a precept, whence much scandal 
and many difficulties would arise. — Your Highness should be 
pleased to consider the excessive scandal ; that the enemies of the 
G-ospel would exclaim, that we, like the Anabaptists, have adopted 
the practice of polygamy, that the Evangelicals, as the Turks, 

allow themselves the license of a plurality of wives 

But in certain cases there is room for dispensation. If any one 
(for example) detained captive in a foreign country, should there 
take unto himself a second wife for the good of his body and 
health, &c. . . . in these cases, we know not by what reason 
a man could be condemned, who marries an additional wife, with 
the advice of his pastor, not £or the purpose of introducing a new 
law, but of satisfying his own necessity. . . . In fine, if 
your Highness be fully and finally resolved to marry yet another 
wife ; we judge, that this ought to be done secretly, as has been 
said above, in speaking of the dispensation, so that it be known 
only to your Highness, to the Lady, and to a few faithful persons 
obliged to silence, under the seal of confession ; hence no attacks 
or scandal of any moment would ensue. For there is nothing 
unusual in princes keeping concubines ; and although the lower 
orders may not perceive the excuses of the thing, the more intel- 
ligent know how to make allowance." 2 

1 [The list of the divines who concurred in the Landgrave's bigamy is here given 
more fully and accurately than in the Review ; more fully and accurately even (though 
without the synonymes) than in any other publication. The Consilium was drawn 
up by Luther and Melanchthon at Wittemberg, 19th December, 1539. It was then 
signed by Bucer ; and afterward, in Hesse, by the other six divines, who were all 
subjects of the Landgrave.] 

2 The nuptials were performed in presence of these witnesses — Melanchthon, Bucer, 
Melander [who officiated,] with others; and privately, in order, as the marriage-con- 
tract bears, " to avoid scandal, seeing that, in modem times, it has been unusual to 



492 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

Biblical Criticism. — (1) " The books of the Kings are more 
worthy of credit than the books of the Chronicles.'''' [Colloquia, 
c. lix. k 6.] — (2) " Job spake not, therefore, as it stands written 

in his book, but hath had such cogitations It is a sheer 

argumentum fabulcc It is probable that Solomon made 

and wrote this book." [lb.] — (3) " This book (Ecclesiastes) ought 
to have been more full ; there is too much of broken matter in it ; 
it has neither boots nor spurs, but rides only in socks, as I myself 
when in the cloister Solomon hath not therefore written 



have two wives at once, although in this case it be Christian and lawful." — The Land- 
grave marvelously contrived to live in harmony with both his wives, and had a large 
family by each. The date of the transaction is the end of 1539. The relative docu- 
ments were published in 1679, by the Elector Palatine, Charles Lewis, and are said 
to have converted, among others, a descendant of Philip, Prince Ernest of Hesse, to 
the Catholic Church. [It has, in fact, been stated by historians, that the doctrine of 
Luther touching marriage, and the practice of the Landgrave, were the obstacles 
which prevented the Emperor Ferdinand I. from declaring for the Reformation : and 
some distinguished converts have openly ascribed their desertion of Protestantism to 
the same cause.] A corresponding opinion of Dr. Henke, late Primarius Professor 
of Theology in Helmstadt, would have figured, had he known it, with admirable effect, 
in Mr. Pearson's catalogue of modern Teutonic heresies. "Monogamy," (says this 
celebrated divine), " and the prohibition of extra-matrimonial connections, are to be 
viewed as the remnants of monachism and of an uninquiring faith." However detest- 
able this doctrine, the bold avowal of the rationalist is honorable, when contrasted 
with the skulking compromise of all professed principle, by men calling themselves — 
The Evangelicals. Renouncing the Pope, they arrogate the power of the Keys to an 
extent never pretended to by any successor of St. Peter ; and proclaiming themselves 
to the world for the Apostles of a purified faith, they can secretly, trembling only at 
discovery, authorize, in name of the Gospel, a dispensation of the moral law. Com- 
pared with Luther [1] or Cranmer, how respectable is the character of Knox ! 

[Before 1843, I had become aware, that the preceding statement was incorrect , 
and in a supplemental note to a pamphlet published by me in that year, I made the 
following retractation: " I do not found my statement of the general opinion of 
Luther and Melanchthon in favor of polygamy, on their special allowance of a second 
wife to Philip the Magnanimous, or on any expressions contained in their Consilium 
on that occasion. On the contrary, that Consilium, and the circumstances under 
which it was given, may be, indeed always have been, adduced to show, that in the 
case of the Landgrave they made a sacrifice of eternal principle to temporary expedi- 
ence. The reverse of this I am able to prove, in a chronological series of testimonies 
by them to the religious legality of polygamy, as' a general institution, consecutively 
downward from their earliest commentaries on the Scriptures and other purely abstract 
treatises. So far, therefore, was there from being any disgraceful compromise of 
principle in the sanction accorded by them to the bigamy of the Landgrave of Hesse, 
they only, in that case, carried their speculative doctrine (held, by the way, also by 
Milton), into practice ; although the prudence they had by that time acquired, rendered 
them, on worldly grounds, averse from their sanction being made publicly known. I 
am the more anxious to correct this general mistake touching the motives of these 
illustrious men, because I was myself, on a former occasion, led to join in the injus- 
tice." — (Be not Schismatics, &c. p. 59, 3d ed.) 

Mr. Hare indeed, in reference to this, denies the existence of such a " series of 
testimonies :" but the value of his denial must depend upon his knowledge ; and while 
he admits that he knows little of Melanchthon, proof is here given, that he knows 
hardly more of Luther. The series I have.] 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS INSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 493 

this book, which hath been made in the days of the Maccabees by 
Sirach. It is like a Talmud compiled from many books, perhaps 
in Egypt, from the Library of King Ptolemy Euergetes. 1 — (4) So 
also have the Proverbs of Solomon been collected by others 
[caught up from the King's mouth, when he spake them at table 
or elsewhere : and those are well marked, wherein the royal 
majesty and wisdom shine conspicuous." 2 (lb.)] — (5) " The book 
of Esther, I toss into the Elbe." 3 [lb.] — ["And when the Doc- 

1 [I now doubt not that Luther used the word Ecclcsiasticus, which the reporter 
heard as Ecclesiastes, appending afterward the translation of The Preacher; for the 
quotation is from the Table Talk. I think no one will dispute this who compares, 
inter alia, Luther's " Preface to the Book of Jesus Sirach," to be found, as all the 
others, in Walch's edition of his works, (xiv. 91.) It is lucky, that Mr. Hare did 
not discover this ; for it would have afforded him a text on which to hang some pages 
of his usual vituperation. On this passage he indeed makes no remark. The mis- 
take has also, I see, escaped Dr. Bindseil, in his conclusion of Foerstemann's late 
elaborate, though by no means adequate, edition of the Colloquia.] 

2 [This is illustrated by what Luther says in the Standing Preface on the Preacher 
of Solomon, which dates from 1524. " This book, also, of the Proverbs of Solomon, 
has been pieced together by others : and among his, have been inserted the doctrine - 
and sayings of sundry wise men. — Item, the Song of Solomon appears, in like man- 
ner, as a pieced book, taken by others out of Solomon's mouth." — I shall not imitate 
Mr. Hare's language ; but simply remark, that in his translation of the addition in the 
text, besides interpolating, he wholly misrepresents what Luther says, in as much as 
his version would limit the collection to the sayings of Solomon alone. — It is in unison 
with such a proceeding, to assert that I cited the sentence originally extracted, " as 
an example of licentious criticism on the Scriptures, of such criticism as proves Luther 
to have furnished warrants arid precedents for all that is most ' obnoxious' 1 in modern 
rationalism." For, though the correlative passages, which Mr. Hare has now com- 
pelled me to adduce, may be held to warrant the worst license of modern criticism ; I 
manifestly meant only, in the several testimonies cited, to show that Luther affords a 
precedent for some one or other of the various degrees of rationalist audacity, and not, 
as Mr. Hare chooses to misrepresent it, that each was alleged as an example and 
parallel of the very highest. — But, as to Luther's doctrine in these passages : — Does 
Mr. Hare venture to maintain — that the opinion of biblical books being a compilation 
by unknown collectors, and, in part, from unknown and uninspired authorities, is an 
orthodox opinion — an opinion consistent with any admissible doctrine of revelation 1 
Will he even hesitate to confess — that this doctrine of Luther would, in a modern 
critic, be justly stigmatized as licentiously rationalistic'!] 

3 [Soon after the publication of this article, I became aware, that Esther was a 
mistake for Esdras ; and this by the verse quoted. The error stands in all Aurifaber's 
editions of the Table Talk, and from him is copied by Walch, from whom again I 
translated. It is corrected, however, in the recensions by Stangwald and Selneccer, 
and, of course, in the new edition by Bindseil. It was therefore without surprise, 
that I found Mr. Hare for once to be not wrong in finding me not right. In excuse, I 
can only say, that at the time of writing the article, not only was I compelled to make 
the extracts without any leisure for deliberation ; but I recollected, though the book 
was not at hand, that Luther, in his work on the Bondage of the Will, had declared 
that Esther ought to be extruded from the canon — a judgment indeed familiar to every 
tyro even in biblical criticism. His concluding words are: — "dignior omnibus, me 
judice, qni extra Canonem haberelur." (Jena Latin, iii. 182.) Esther, I thus knew, 
was repudiated by Luther, and among his formulse of dismissal the preceding recom- 
mended itself as at once the most characteristic and the shortest. Mr. Hare speaks 
of Luther as " a dear friend.'''' But it appears from his general unacquaintance with 



494 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

tor was correcting the second book of the Maccabees, he said : — ] 
I am so an enemy to the book of Esther, that- 1 would it did not 
exist; for it Judaizes too much, and hath in it a great deal of 
heathenish naughtiness. [Then said Magister Foerster," (the 
great Hebrew professor) : — " The Jews rate the book of Esther 
at more than any of the prophets ; the prophets Daniel and Isaiah 
they absolutely contemn. Whereupon Dr. Martinus : — It is hor- 
rible that they, the Jews, should despise the noblest predictions 
of these two holy prophets ; the one of whom teaches and preaches 
Christ in all richness and purity, while the other pourtrays and 
describes, in the most certain manner, monarchies, and empires 
along with the kingdom of Christ." 1 (lb.)] — (6) " Isaiah hath 

even this, the Reformer's favorite, and perhaps most celebrated book, certainly from 
its two recent translations into English by two Anglican clergymen, the book of his 
best known in this country — that Luther, instead of being " a dear friend," is almost 
an utter stranger to the Archdeacon. For Mr. Hare knows nothing (even at second 
hand), of Luther's famous repudiation of Esther, in his most famous work. — As for 
myself, I relied also on the following testimony ; and which, had we nothing else, 
would be alone decisive in regard to Luther's rejection of Esther.] 

1 [On this Mr. Hare, inter alia, remarks : " The combination of the book with that 
of the Maccabees — which the Reviewer ought not to have omitted — as well as For- 
ster's remarks, leaves no doubt that Luther spoke of the book of Esdras." I have now 
given the whole relative context ; and had Mr. Hare possessed the sorriest smattering 
of the Rabbinic lore which he affects — had he, in fact, not been unread even in the 
most notorious modern works on biblical criticism, he would certainly have had " no 
doubt," but no doubt that Luther spoke, and could speak only of the book of Esther. 
I shall simply quote the one highest Jewish authority in regard to the comparative 
estimation among the Jews, of Esther and the Prophets ; while, as for Christian testi- 
monies, I may refer to almost every competent inquiry into the canonicity of the books 
of the Old Testament. Let us listen then to the " Rabbi of Rabbis," Rambam, Moses 
Ben Maimon, Moses Maimonides ; to him whom the learned Hebrews delight to honor 
with every title of Oriental admiration ; and who, by the confession of the two great- 
est among Christian scholars, 

" Solus migari Judaeos desiit inter." 

" All the Prophetic books, and all the [Hagio graphic] Writings are of the things 
to be abolished, in the days of the Messiah, saving alone the roll of Esther. For, lo, 
this endureth, like the Law of Pentateuch and the Oral Law [Talmud] ; and these, 
they shall not cease, even unto eternity. For howbeit the memory of all other persecu- 
tions shall die out ; . . . . yet, as it is written, ' the days of Purim shall not fail from 
among the Jews, nor the memorial of them perish from their seed. [Esther, ix. 
28."] (Yad Chasaka, B. iii. tr. x., Hilchot Meghilla, c. 2, § 18 ; and passages to the 
same effect are to be found in his Ikkarim. Compare also the Midrasch Meghilla; 
and the margin of the Jerusalem Talmud, where, among the commentators, the Rabbi 
Jochanan and the Rabbi Resch-Lakisch, from the texts, of Deut. v. 22 ; and Esth. ix. 
28, deduce the same result, by a marvelous and truly Jewish reasoning.) On the 
other hand, who has ever heard, as Mr. Hare assumes, and would have it understood, 
that Esdras was, at any time, not to say always, held, even as a prophet, in any spe- 
cial estimation among the Israelites'? Besides these, there are sundry elementary 
errors in Mr. Hare's relative observations on this book ; but these, as they do not di- 
rectly concern the question, may pass. Traveled in the Ghemara, and stumbling o» 
his o'vn Church's threshold !] 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS INSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 495 

borrowed his whole art and knowledge from David out of the 
Psalter." 1 [lb. e. lx. § 10.]— (7) " The history of Jonah is so 
monstrous, that it is absolutely incredible." 2 [lb.] — (8) " That 
the Epistle to the Hebrews is not by Saint Paul ; nor indeed by 
any apostle, is shown by chap. ii. 3 It is by an excellently 

1 [Luther also (lb. § 23) says : " Moses and David are the two highest prophets 
What Isaiah hath, that he takes out of David, and the other prophets do in like man- 
ner." This I presume to think inconsistent with a true doctrine of revelation. In- 
spiration borrowing ! — Inspiration imitating ! I did not, however, suppose that, re- 
prehensible as might be the expression, Luther denied the prophetic gift of Isaiah. 
Mr. Hare mistakes the passage translated in the text ; and, otherwise, says nothing 
to the point.] 

2 [I quoted these words of Luther to show in how irreverent a manner he thought 
himself privileged to speak of the Holy Scriptures. Mr. Hare is of a different opin- 
ion, which he is entitled to hold, if de gustibus non est disputandum. But in his trans- 
lation of the relative context (here as elsewhere), he certainly has no right to make 
Luther speak as he would wish him to have spoken, far less to found on what he 
gives as Luther's, and not on Luther's veritable expressions. But this he does ; and 
doing this while he ostensibly defends, he really gives up the Reformer as indefensi- 
ble. Only, he ought, in candor, to have said so, instead of saying the reverse. For 
example : Luther, in reference to the history of Jonah, says : "Es gehet auch ebcn 
naerrisch zu." (" It passes, moreover, even into the foolish.") This Mr. Hare renders 
by — "And how oddly it turns out." Fidus interpres ! Of Mr. Hare's style of trans- 
lation, indeed, I may here (instar omnium) give one other sample ; where, as neither 
in the preceding, does he enable his reader to detect the inconsistency by quoting, 
as he does on less important occasions, the original. Melanchthon had fallen ill at 
Weimar, from contrition and fear for the part he had been led to take in the Land- 
grave's polygamy ; his life was even in danger. Luther came ; and Melanchthon is 
one of the three persons whom the Reformer afterward boasts of having raised mira- 
culously from the dead, At present we have only to do with Mr. Hare's translation 
of the account given by Luther of the operation. "Allda (saget Lutherus) musste 
mir unser Herr Gott herhalten. Denn ich warf ihm den Sack fuer die Thuere, und 
rieb ihm die Ohren rait alien promissionibus exaudiendarum, die ich in der heilige 
Schrift zu erzaehlen wusste, dass er mich musste erhoeren, wo ich anders seinen 
Verheissungen trauen sollte." May I venture, indeed, to translate this 1 (" Then 
and there (said Luther), I made our Lord God to smart for it. For I threw him down 
the sack before the door, and rubbed his ears with all his promises of hearing prayer 
which I knew how to recapitulate from Holy Writ, so that he could not but listen to 
me, should I ever again place any reliance on his promises.") This Mr. Hare thus 
professedly translates : " Then, said Luther, Our Lord God could not but hear me ; for 
I threw my sack before His door, and wearied His ears with all His promises of hear ■ 
ing prayers, which I could repeat out of Holy Writ ; so that He could not but hear 
me if I were ever to trust in His promises." Mr. Hare's translation is not only not 
a version, as it pretends to be, of Luther's fearful expressions in the preceding pass- 
age, and is thus in reality a condemnation ; but is out of harmony with the reformer's 
whole theory in regard to the efficacy of prayer in general, and particularly in regard 
to the mighty — the almighty power of his own. For Luther believed, that nothing 
could be refused to his earnest supplication ; and accordingly he declares, that it re- 
quired only that he should sincerely ask for the destruction of the world, to precipi- 
tate the advent of the last day. This doctrine was carried to every its most absurd 
extreme by the other reformers ; and even the trigamist prelate of Cassel, the wine- 
bibbing Melander, exhorted his clergy to pray for a plentiful hop-harvest, that (as his 
son or grandson records), though himself abominating beer, there might thus be a less 
demand for wine, and he, accordingly, allowed to indulge more cheaply in the juice 
of the grape.] 



496 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS 

learned man, a disciple of the Apostles It should be no 

stumbling-block if there be found in it a mixture of wood, straw, 
hay." [Standing Preface in Luther's Version.] — (9) " The Epistle 
of James, I account the writing of no apostle." [Standing Pref- 
ace.] " St. Jameses Epistle is truly an Epistle of straw [in con- 
trast to them," (" the right and noblest books of the New Testa- 
ment") " for it hath in it no evangelical character." 1 (Fragmen- 
tary Preface to the New Testament, 1524.)]— (10) " The Epistle 

of Jude is an abstract or copy of St. Peter's second ; and 

allegeth sayings and stories which have no place in Scripture." 
[Standing Preface, &c] — (11) "In the Revelation of John much 

is wanting to let me deem it either prophetic or apostolical 

I can discover no trace that it is established by the Holy Spirit." 
[Preface of 1522. ] 2 — Uavpa /u,ev, aXXa p,aka Xcyicos. 

As to this last, how could Mr. Pearson make any opinion touch- 
ing the Apocalypse matter of crimination against Semler and 
Eichhorn ? Is the Christian Advocate unaware, that the most 
learned and intelligent of Protestant — of Calvinist divines have 
almost all doubted or denied the canonicity of the Revelation ? 
The following rise the first to our recollection. Erasmus — who 

1 [In various of his works, and from an early to the latest period, Luther denied 
the canonicity of St. James's Epistle. In 1519, in the seventh Thesis against Eck, 
he declares it "wholly inferior to the apostolic majesty;" and in the following year, 
in the Chapter on Sacraments, of his Babylonish Captivity, "unworthy of an apos- 
tolic spirit." In 1522, in a conclusion, afterward omitted, of the Standing Preface, 
he excludes it " from the list of canonical books ;" an exclusion, however, contained 
in the standing Preface itself, in addition to the testimony quoted from it in the text. 
We find in the Church Postills, which were frequently republished, Luther asserting : 
" This Epistle was written by no Apostle ; nowhere indeed is it fully conformable to 
the true apostolic character and manner, and to pure doctrine." (Walch, xii. 769.) 
Finally, it is rejected, as in doctrine contradictory of St. Paul, in the Table- Talk. (C. 
lxix. ^ 4.) Of all this Mr. Hare seems ignorant ; nor does he translate the passage 
in the text without interpolating a modification of his own. His observations are 
otherwise of no import.] 

2 [I have not deemed it necessary to quote any thing in confirmation or supple- 
ment of the extracts from Luther, relative to the biblical books, except in those cases 
in which Mr. Hare has hazarded his strictures. On more than half of my examples 
of Luther's temerarious criticism, he has been silent. He has ventured no remark in 
regard to the books of — (1) Ki?igs and Chronicles, (2) Job, (3) Ecclesiastes, (8) Epis- 
tle to the Hebrews, (10) Epistle of Jude, (11) Apocalypse. The half of these likewise, 
be it remarked, are attacked by Luther, regularly and in writings formally expound- 
ing his last and most matured opinions. So that even if Mr. Hare had been as suc- 
cessful, as he is unfortunate, in his counter-criticism — were, in fact, all the extracts 
expunged, in regard to which he has thought it possible to make a single objection ; 
nevertheless my conclusion would still stand untouched — that Luther, though person- 
ally no rationalist, affords a warrant to the most audacious of rationalistic assaults. 
For, as observed, he could not vindicate this as a right peculiar to himself — as a right 
not common to all. And so Wegscheider dedicates his " Institutiones" — "Piis Ma- 
nibus Lutheri."~] 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS INSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 49 

may, in part, be claimed by the Reformation, doubted its authen- 
ticity. Calvin and Beza denounced the book as unintelligible ; 
and prohibited the pastors of Geneva from all attempt at interpre- 
tation ; for which they were applauded by Joseph Scaliger, Isaac 
Casaubon, and our countryman, Moras, to say nothing of Bodinus, 
&c. Joseph Scaliger, of the learned the most learned, rejecting 
also the Epistle of St. James, did not believe the Apocalypse to be 
the writing of St. John — and allowed only two chapters to be 
comprehensible ; while Dr. South, a great Anglican authority, 
scrupled not to pronounce it a book (we quote from memory), that 
either found a man mad or left him so. 

But in the fourth place, if there were any connection between 
the antecedent of this argument and its consequent, we ought 
unquestionably to find, that in this country, religious tests in 
question do effectually accomplish the intent for which they were 
imposed ; that the dangerous neology so deprecated in the Ger- 
man divines, should with us be found, if found at all, exclusively 
among those who had not formally surrendered their Protestant 
privilege of free and unprejudiced inquiry. But not only is this 
not the case, the very contrary is notoriously true ; the attempt 
at fettering opinion, rousing apparently in the captive a perilous 
spirit of revolt. In fact, the nearest approximation to the learned 
freedom of the German divines, and the most enthusiastic enco- 
miasts of their writings, have been found among the English 
clergy, and .in that clergy, among the teachers and dignitaries of 
the English Universities. Were we, indeed, required to look 
around in this country for the one centre, in which a spirit of 
theological inquiry, analogous to that of the Protestant Universi- 
ties of the empire, has been most boldly, most conspicuously 
manifested ; we should find it, assuredly, not in any independent 
seminary, not in any dissenting academy, but in the venerable 
school itself, of which the Christian Advocate is an ornament — 
fenced as he fondly contends it to be, against the entrance of' 
heresy and schism. Mainly to the latitudinary divines of Cam- 
bridge, do the Germans themselves trace the determination which, 
in its result, occasioned in the Lutheran Church, the memorable 
— the melancholy revolution in theological opinion. Conyers 
Middleton, Doctor of Divinity, Professor and Public Librarian of 
Cambridge, was, a century ago, the express abstract of a German 
ultra-rationalist of the present day. Tests were unavailing against 
the open Arianism of Dr. Samuel Clarke, against the unobtrusive 

Ii 



498 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES— ADMISSION OF DISSENTERS. 

Socinianism of Sir Isaac Newton. Professor Porson ejected, after 
Newton, the text of the three Heavenly Witnesses, as an human 
interpolation; and his decision has been all but universally ad- 
mitted — at least in Cambridge. Was this attempt to purge the 
Scripture of a spurious verse, a commendable act of Protestant 
criticism ? Still more commendable will be every honest attempt 
to purge it of a spurious chapter or book ; and the German critics 
must thus be honorably absolved. Was it, on the contrary, a 
culpable act of skeptical curiosity ? Then are academic tests of 
no security against the inroads of a restless exegesis. — On either 
alternative, the Advocate's argument is null. 

Again, the German Divines are denounced by him for main- 
taining " that the Pentateuch was composed out of different frag- 
ments which were collected together." He can not surely be 
unaware that Dr. Marsh, Bishop of Peterborough, and present 
Margaret Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, maintains, after 
Bichhorn, that the three first Gospels "are composed of fragments 
which were collected together." In both cases the difficulty of 
reconciling such an hypothesis with an orthodox theory of inspi- 
ration is identical ; but how different in religious importance are 
the two series of books ! — The dilemma is manifest ; and on either 
horn the Advocate is equally impaled. 

It is known to all who know any thing of modern divinity, that 
the theological writings of Eichhorn, especially his Introductions, 
concentrate in the highest degree all that is peculiar and most 
obnoxious in the German school of biblical criticism — of which, 
in fact, he was, while living, the genuine representative, and dis- 
tinguished leader. Now, Lloyd, late Professor of Hebrew in 
Cambridge, circulated proposals for translating the boldest of 
Eichhorn's Introductions — that to the Old Testament ; and Bishop 
Marsh, in his Lectures on Divinity, addressed to the rising clergy 
of the University, once and again recommends, in the strongest 
'terms, the same work to their study ; nor, throughout his whole 
course, does he think it necessary to utter a single word of warn- 
ing against the irreligious tendency of this, or, as far as we 
remember, of any other production of the German divines. And, 
be it considered, that, while he peculiarly affects an ultra An- 
glican orthodoxy, the Bishop's knowledge of German theology is 
of a very different character from that of those who have been 
recently so busy in giving us the measure of their modicum of 
knowledge and understanding on this important and difficult sub- 



DO RELIGIOUS TESTS INSURE RELIGIOUS TEACHERS? 499 

ject. Indeed, with the exception of Mr. Thirlwall's excellent 
Introduction to his translation of Schleiermacher on St. Luke, 
(he might have chosen, we think, a fitter work), and some parts 
of Mr. Pusey's book, the public had, in every point of view, far 
better be without all that has recently appeared in this country, 
in regard to the result of Protestantism in Germany. But in 
reference to our argument : — If men in the situations, and with 
the authority of Lloyd and Marsh, endeavored thus to promote the 
study of Eichhorn and his school among the academic youth; 
either the opinions of the Grerman Divines are not such as the 
Advocate and others have found it convenient to represent them; 
or {quod absit !) these opinions are already throned in the high 
places of the English Universities and Church, in spite of the 
very oaths and subscriptions which it is argued are necessary in 
order to exclude them. 1 

1 [But of the value of Oath and Subscription in Oxford and Cambridge, I have else- 
where spoken in the previous and ensuing articles.] 



VII.— ON THE RIGHT OF DISSENTERS TO ADMISSION INTO 
THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES. 

(SUPPLEMENTAL.) 



(January, 1835.) 



1. Speech of Henry, Lord Bishop of Exeter, on occasion of a 
Petition from certain Members of the Senate of Cambridge, 
presented to the House of Lords on Monduy, April 21, 1834. 
8vo. London: 1834. 

2. Substance of a Speech delivered in the House of Commons 
on Wednesday, March 26, 1834, by Sir Robert Harry Inglis, 
Bart., in reference to a Petition from certain Members of the 
Senate of the University of Cambridge. 8vo. London : 1834. 

The opponents and supporters of the recent measures for re- 
storing the English Universities to their proper character of un- 
exclusive schools, may pretend indifferently to the honor of having 
argued their cases in the worst possible manner ; and in the cloud 
of pamphlets (we have seen nearly thirty), and throughout the 
protracted discussions in Parliament, which this question has 
drawn forth, the reasons most confidently urged by the former, 
are precisely those which, as suicidal, they ought especially to 
have eschewed ; and these same reasons, though cautiously 
avoided, as unanswerable, by the latter, are the very grounds on 
which the necessity not only of this, but of far more important 
measures of academical reform, were to be triumphantly estab- 
lished. So curious in fact was the game at cross purposes, that 
the official defenders of things as they are in Oxford and Cam- 
bridge do, on the principle of their own objection to this partial 
restoration of the ancient academic order, call out for a sweeping 
overthrow of the actual administration of these establishments ; 



ARGUMENT BY THE OXFORD ADVOCATES. 501 

and we are confident of proving before the conclusion of the pre- 
sent article, that, unless apostates not only from their reasoning 
on this question, but from their professions of moral and religious 
duty, we have a right to press into the service, as partisans of a 
radical reform in Oxford (besides the Chancellor of that Univer- 
sity, his Grace of Wellington), the Bishop of Exeter, and Sir 
Robert Inglis themselves. From the general tenor of their poli- 
tics, but in particular from their personal relations to this Univer- 
sity (the one its representative, the other long a member of its 
collegial interest), these eminent individuals were the natural, 
and on the late occasion, the strenuous, champions in Parliament 
of the party now dominant in Oxford ; — indeed so satisfied do 
they appear with their own achievements in the debate, that they, 
and they only, have deemed their principal speeches, in opposition 
to the Dissenters' claim, of sufficient consequence to merit publi- 
cation in a separate form. 

In the article on this subject in our last Number, we were 
compelled to omit or hurry over many important matters. — One 
portentous error, common to both sides, we indeed (for the second 
time) exposed — that the English Universities are the complement 
or general incorporation of the Colleges ;• — an assumption and 
admission, from which the partisans of exclusion were able legi- 
timately to infer- — that, as the constituent parts were private or 
exclusive foundations, the constituted whole could not be a national 
or unexclusive establishment.— -There was, however, another not 
less important error, on which we could only touch ; and in regard 
to the argument attempted to be drawn from the injustice of in- 
terfering with trustees in the faithful exercise of their duty, so 
confidently advanced by Dr. Philpotts and Sir Robert Inglis, we 
merely stated, in passing, how gladly we joined issue with them 
on the principle ; and now proceed, in supplement of our previous 
paper, to show, that, when fully and fairly applied, this principle 
affords a result the very converse of that anticipated either by 
those who so rashly brought it to bear upon the question, or by 
those who allowed it to pass without even an attempt at rejoinder. 
—The following is the argument as pointed by the two Oxford 
advocates : 

The Bishop of Exeter. — " My Lords, it is, I apprehend, an admitted 
principle, that where a corporation has received its charter for a specific 
purpose, the law of England repels, and the legislature of England has 
hitherto repelled, every attempt to break in upon that corporation, except 
on an allegation either that its members have omitted to perform the duties 



502 ENGLISH tmiVERSlTIES AND DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

for which they ivere incorporated, or that the purposes for which thej 
were incorporated were originally, or have been declared by subsequent 
enactments to be illegal, immoral, or superstitious. 

" Such, I will venture to say, is the principle of the law of England in 
respect to corporations ; and even if a lawyer could deA r ise any plea in 
derogation of it, I am quite sure that there is no Englishman of plain un- 
derstanding who would not proclaim his assent to the reasonableness of that 
principle. Now, is it, can it be alleged, that either of the Universities,, or 
that any of the Colleges within them, have violated the duties of their cor- 
porate character, or that they have abused the poicers intrusted to them 
far the performance of those duties, or that the purposes and object of 
their incorporation are illegal, immoral, superstitious, or otherwise con- 
demnable ? My Lords, no man has ventured, nor ivill any man venture 
to say. any of these things. On what pretense, then, could Parliament dare 
— (forgive the word, my Lords ; when a man feels strongly, he will not 
scruple to speak strongly, but your Lordships will not, I am sure, think 
the word needs an apology, for you would not dare to do what is wrong;) 
— on what pretense, then, I ask, woiild Parliament dare to set a prece- 
dent, which would destroy every thing like the principle of property as 
connected with corporations, and would violate all the sacredness that 
belongs to oaths — ay, my Lords, the sacredness of oaths ? I say this, be- 
cause it must not be forgotten, that the members of the University of Oxford 
have sworn that they toill obey their statutes, and I doubt not they mill 
keep that oath inviolate. Parliament may have the power to destroy 
these bodies, but Parliament has not the power — and, if such a thing shall 
be attempted, Parliament will find that it has not the power — to make 
these illustrious bodies faithless to the sacred duties which they have 
sworn to discharge. My Lords, the University of Oxford I know well — 
many of my happiest years have been passed within it — and from that 
knowledge of it I speak, when I proclaim my firm conviction, that if both 
houses of Parliament shall pass the bill which has been brought into the 
other house, and if his Majesty shall, unhappily, be advised, and shall 
yield to the advice, to give to it the royal assent — you will not at Oxford 
find a man — certainly very, very few men — who would not submit to be 
pennyless and homeless, to be outcasts on the world, rather than do that 
which they now, it seems, are to be required to do — to be parties to the 
desecration of what they hold to be most sacred, and to the destruction of 
what they deem to be most valuable in this life, because it is connected 
with the interests of the life to come." — (Speech, &c, p. 11, &c.) 

Sir Robert Inglis. — " The honorable and learned member for Dublin 
contends, that as the legislature interfered once with the Universities, it 
has a right to interfere again ; but I put it upon the score of common 
honesty and honor, whether any gentleman in private life would sanction 
the principle of taking back a gift because you happened to bestow it ? 
Tell me, if you please, that the gift was a trust, and that the trust has 
been abused, and then I can understand you. Until it can be proved, 
however, that the two Universities have betrayed their trust, you can not 
in good faith or common honesty require us to restore the boon which you 
gave I do not consider the question to be, whether the Univer- 
sity was founded by Catholics or Dissenters. The present possession has 
lasted 600 years ; and unless [which in his speech of the 26th March Sir 
Robert says, ' is not even alleged' ] it can be proved that the trust has been 



ARGUMENT BY THE OXFORD ADVOCATES. 503 

abused, I contend that it ought not to be disturbed. Is the House pre- 
pared to take away the rights and privileges of this University without 
any proof of delinquency V — (March 21, 1834, Mirror of Parliament, 
vol. ii. p. 983.) 

— " I know how unpopular the practice is in this House of even refer- 
ring to the oaths which any honorable member has taken ; but I will not 
shrink from that duty, whether the individuals who have taken these 
oaths be members of the Church of Rome, or members of the Protestant 
Church of England. Many there are sitting on the opposite side of the 
House, and who, I almost fear, are prepared to vote for the second reading 
of this bill, who are bound in the strongest manner, by solemn oaths, to 
uphold the tivo Universities. I call upon the House, and upon these hon- 
orable members, to listen while I venture to read to them the oaths which 
they took when they were admitted into the Universities. I take the oath 
of matriculation at Cambridge, which the members of the opposite bench 

have taken The words of the oath, on proceeding to a degree, go 

even farther, and bind the party to maintain, not only the honor and dig- 
nity of the University — which lie might contend he consults by admitting 
Dissenters — but even the statutes, and ordinances, and customs, which 
he can not deceive himself in supposing that this bill upholds. The words 
on this occasion, addressed by the Vice-Chancellor to the party, are — 
" Jurabis quod statuta nostra, ordinationes, et consuetudines approbatas 
observabis." I ask the honorable member for Wiltshire, and every other 
honorable member who has had the advantage of a University education, 
to consider the nature of the oath which they so sole??i?ily took. If there 
be faith in man — if there be any use in religious instruction, I ask hon- 
orable members to pause before they vote in favor of the measure now 
before us. I do assure the noble Lord that / do not quote these oaths in 
any other spirit than that in which I would xvish him to address me, if 
he believed that on any occasion I ivas incurring the risk of violating, 
any such engagement." — (June 20, 1834, Mirror of Parliament, vol. iii. 
p. 2354.) 

The whole reasoning in these quotations, is drawm from two 
places : the one, the Rights of public Trustees ; the other, the 
Obligation of the Academic Oaths. 

I. The reasoning from the former place — the Rights of public 
Trustees — is as follows : — Trustees created by and for the public, 
who have continued faithfully to discharge their duty, ought not 
(what the admission of the dissenters, it is assumed, will actually 
occasion) to be superseded or compelled to resign ; — The govern- 
ors and instructors of the English Universities are, and are ad- 
mitted to be, such trustees ; — Therefore, &c. 

We have already stated, that we cordially join issue with our 
opponents in the principle of their argument ; and our line of 
reasoning does not require that we should correct the terms in 
which their major proposition is expressed. We may, however, 
notice, that, in the first place, it is inapplicable, inasmuch as the 



504 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND DISSENTERS.— -(SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

assumption through which it is connected with the minor — that 
the opening of the Universities to the Dissenters would virtually 
compel the present trustees to resign — will be shown, in treating 
of the reasoning from the latter place, to he unfounded : and, in 
the second, that though true, as far as it goes, it requires for 
absolute truth an extension also to insufficiency ; seeing, that a 
public trust (saving always the interest of incumbents and inde- 
pendent of all private rights of property) may justly, without 
any allegation of dishonesty or negligence in the trustee, be re- 
organized, or placed under a different management, the moment 
that the welfare of the public renders such a measure expedient. 
A trustee, qua trustee, has, against his truster, duties but not 
rights. His only claim of continuance, is his superior or equal 
competency to discharge the office. A University is a trust con- 
fided by the state to certain hands for the common interest of the 
nation ; nor has it ever heretofore been denied, that a University 
may, and ought, by the state to be from time to time corrected, 
reformed, or recast, in conformity to accidental changes of rela- 
tion, and looking toward an improved accomplishment of its 
essential ends. Under this extension the Dissenters would be 
safe. But waving all this, and taking the proposition simply as 
it stands, it is evident that if it be assumed by our opponents — ■ 
That public trustees ought not to be superseded without a proof 
of negligence or abuse ; multo magis, must it be admitted by 
them, as implied in their own assumption, and by all as a propo- 
sition unconditionally true — That public trustees, on a proof of 
negligence or abuse, ought to be superseded. On the hypothesis, 
therefore, of our proving, that the governors of either University 
have not only neglected or partially abused, but betrayed and 
systematically frustrated their whole great trust, these doughty 
champions of the collegial interest must, on their own principle, 
be, presto, metamorphosed into its assailants. Nor is such a 
proof to seek ; it is already on record. To Oxford we limit our 
consideration, not that an equal malversation might not be estab- 
lished against Cambridge, but because we have only, as yet, 
proved our allegations of illegality and breach of trust, in relation 
to the former. 

The Bishop of Exeter and Sir Robert Inglis, not only assert 
that no abuse of trust can justly be alleged against the Univer- 
sities (meaning of course in reference to Oxford, the Heads of 
Houses, who are by law solely bound, and exclusively competent. 



RIGHTS OF PUBLIC TRUSTEES. 505 

to prevent, and who, consequently, have alone the power to tole- 
rate and perpetuate abuses), hut that no one has ever dared to 
hazard such an allegation. " Is it" (says the former), " can it 
be alleged, that either of the Universities, or that any of the 
Colleges within them, have violated the duties of their corporate 
character, or that they have abused the powers intrusted to them 
for the performance of those duties ? My Lords, no man has 
ventured,, nor will any man venture to say any of these things." 
And with equal confidence the latter avers that such abuse " is 
not even alleged." Defiance like this, from such a quarter, was 
alone wanted to carry to its climax the history of that official 
treason of which the University of Oxford has been the prey ; for 
not only has the abuse of trust in this venerable school been de- 
nounced by us as unparalleled in the annals of any other Chris- 
tian institution, but our exposure of it has been so complete that 
those interested in its continuance- — those on whom defense was 
a necessity, moral and religious, have been unable to allege a 
single word in vindication. 1 

It is now above three years and a half since we published a 
principal, and above three years since we subjoined a supplemen- 
tary, article on the subject. [Nos. iv. v. of this series.] 

In these we stated, that though Great Britain, from the con- 
stituency of its unreformed Parliament, was by nature the happy 
paradise of jobs ; yet that in that country the lawless usurpation 
of which the two great national Universities of England had been 
the victims (from the magnitude of the public evil, and the sin- 
gular character of the circumstances under which it was accom- 
plished), stands pre-eminent and alone. With more immediate 
reference to Oxford, we showed that it was at once conspicuous 
for the extent to which the most important interests of the public 
had been sacrificed to private ends— for the unholy disregard dis- 
played in its consummation of every moral and religious tie — 

1 In deference to the common sense and common honesty of the collegial interest, 
we shall not consider two unparalleled pamphlets, published (by one of its Fellows, 
we presume) under the name of " A Member of Convocation," as representing more 
than the moral eccentricities of an individual. Our exposure is not to be refuted, by 
regularly quoting, as from us, particular passages we never wrote, and by systemat- 
ically combating, as our argument, the very converse of every general position we 
actually maintained. 

We are, however, pleased to see that the Quarterly Review has been driven to a 
similar tactic, in attempting to say something in answer to our recent article on the 
present subject, in its last Number. But we have no room at present to expose it« 
misrepresentations. 



506 F.N*.; L1SH UNIVERSITIES AND DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

for the sacred character of the agents through whom the unholy 
treason has heen perpetrated — for the systematic perjury it has 
naturalized in this great seminary of religious education — for the 
apathy with which the public detriment has been tolerated by 
the State, the impiety by the Church — and, last not least, for 
the unacquaintance so universally manifested with so flagrant a 
corruption. 

1. We showed in the first place, that a great breach of trust 
had been committed. — That there were two systems of education 
to be distinguished in the English Universities ; a legal, non- 
existent in fact, and an actual, non-existent in law ; and that in 
Oxford no two systems could be imagined more universally and 
diametrically opposed — in ends — in conditions — in means. 

In the Legal system, the end, for the sake of which the Uni- 
versity is privileged by the nation, and that consequently imper- 
atively prescribed by the statutes, is to afford public education 
in the faculties of Theology, Law, Medicine, and Arts, and to 
certify — by the testimony of a degree — that this education had 
in one or other of these faculties been effectually received. — In 
the Illegal, degrees are still ostensibly accorded in all the facul- 
ties : but they are now empty, or rather delusive, distinctions ; 
for the only education at present requisite for all degrees, is the 
private tuition afforded by the Colleges in the elementary depart- 
ment of the lowest faculty alone. Of ten degrees still granted in 
Oxford, all are given without the statutory conditions ; and nine 
are, except for the privileges not withdrawn from them, utterly 
worthless. 

In the Legal system, it is, of course, involved as conditions, 
that the candidate for a degree shall have spent a sufficient time 
in the University, and this in attendance on the public courses of 
that faculty in which he purposes to graduate. — In the Illegal, 
when the statutory education in the higher faculties, and the 
higher department of the lowest, was no longer afforded, these 
relative conditions, were, though indispensable by statute, re- 
placed, in practice, by empty standing. 

The Legal system, as its necessary mean, employs in every 
faculty a co-operative body of select Professors, publicly teaching 
in conformity to statutory regulation. — The Illegal (in which the 
mutilated remnant of professorial instruction is little more than 
a nominal appendage), abandons the petty fragment of private 
education it precariously affords, as a perquisite, to the inca- 



RIGHTS OF PUBLIC TRUSTEES. 507 

pacity of an individual, Fellow by chance, and Tutor by usurpa- 
tion. 

England is thus the only Christian country, where the Parson, 
if he reach the University at all, receives only the same minimum 
of theological tuition as the Squire ; — the only civilized country, 
where the degree, which confers on the Jurist a strict monopoly 
of practice, is conferred without either instruction or examina- 
tion ; — the only country in the world, where the Physician is 
turned loose upon society with extraordinary privileges, but with- 
out professional education or even the slightest guarantee for his 
skill. 

2. "We showed, in the second place, by whom the breach of 
trust had been committed. — The perfidious trustees were the 
Heads of the private corporations or colleges in connection with 
the University. The Colleges, though endowments limited to 
the members, are wholly extraneous to the corporation, of the 
University. Their Fellows, who, in general, obtain the situation 
from any other qualification than literary merit, far less from 
their capacity for instruction, are unknown even by name in the 
academical charters and statutes ; and it is only at a recent date, 
and for private ends, that, by a royal ordinance, the Heads of 
these private corporations were unconstitutionally elevated into 
the incapable and faithless rulers of the public corporation, to 
which, qua college heads, they were and are wholly foreign. The 
Caroline statute, procured by the influence of Laud, bestowed on 
the Heads of Houses, 1°, the guardianship of the statutes, and, 
2°, with the duty of watching over the improvement of the Uni- 
versity, the initiative of every new law ; the legislative power 
remaining always with the Convocation, i. e. the assembly of all 
the full graduates in connection with the University. The aca- 
demic Legislature, however, declare, that as the Heads and Chan- 
cellor are emancipated from the penalties of ordinary transgress- 
ors, " so on them there is laid a weightier obligation of conscience ;" 
and " seeing that to their fidelity is intrusted the keeping and 
guardianship of the statutes, if, (may it never happen !) through 
their negligence or inactivity, they suffer any statutes whatever 
to fall into desuetude, and to be, as it were, silently abrogated, 

IN THAT EVENT WE DECREE THEM GUILTY OP VIOLATED TRUST AND 
PERJURY." 

3. In the third place, we exposed the interested motives and 
the paltry means which determined, and the circumstances which 



508 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

rendered possible, the universal frustration of the constitutive 
statutes, and consequent suspension of the University ; for a 
University only exists as a privileged instrument of public edu- 
cation. 

4. In the fourth place, we proved, that the Collegial Heads 
themselves ivere fully conscious, that the change from the stat- 
utory to the illegal system is at. once greatly for their private 
advantage, and greatly for the disadvantage of the University 
and nation. For, rather than allow its merits to be canvassed, 
by venturing to ask for the actual system a legal sanction, even 
from a friendly house of Convocation, these betrayers of their 
public trust have gone on from generation to generation volun- 
tarily perjuring themselves, and denying the privileges of the 
University to all who would not be constrained to follow their 
flagitious example. 

Such was the burden of the accusation. The accused were 
the collegial interest and its heads — the reverend governors of 
the University — a class of churchmen who now resist the natural 
right of the Dissenters to education in the national seminaries, 
on the plea, that Oxford is, in their hands, less a school of learn- 
ing than of pious orthodoxy, and who, heretofore pugnaciously 
alive on every trivial disparagement of their literary estimation, 
were now called forth by honor and by sacred duty to vindicate 
even their moral and religious respectability. In such circum- 
stances, where silence was tantamount to confession, confession 
to disgrace, what does such unwonted, such unnatural torpidity 
proclaim ? 

" Pudet Iicec opprobria nobis 

Et dici potuisse, et non potuisse refelli." 

This alone can explain or excuse their quiescence. Yet listen to 
the advocates of these self-confessing culprits. " My Lords, no 
man has ventured, nor will any man venture to say, either that 
they have omitted to perform the duties for which they were 
incorporated, or that they have abused the powers intrusted to 
them for the performance of their duties." " Nemo,- Hercule, 
nemo ?" 

" For who dare deem that Lais is unchaste V 

But in thus ignoring (in ignorance we are bound to believe) 
before the two Houses of Parliament, not only the delinquency, 
but its exposure, the advocates of the collegial interest did not, 
we must admit, transcend the general unacquaintance of the 



RIGHTS OF PUBLIC TRUSTEES. 509 

Legislature with all that appertained to the constitution and his- 
tory, the rights and interests of the Universities. Not a single 
voice was raised in either House to signalize the misstatement 
and to retort the argument. Indeed the most elementary igno- 
rance of academical relations was manifested in the bill, and per- 
vaded the whole course of the subsequent debates. The bill was 
preposterous (we use the word in its proper signification), and 
confounded what ought to have been, not only distinguished but 
contrasted. The Dissenters could only claim admission into the 
Universities as national schools; but as national schools they 
had been suspended, and an intrusive private tuition allowed to 
usurp the place of the public education organized and privileged 
by law. But instead of first simply demanding, ivhat could not 
possibly have been refused, the restoration of the Universities to 
their public and statutory existence, and with which restoration 
the universal admissibility of the lieges would have followed as a 
corollary ; the Bill and its supporters first recognized the conver- 
sion of the national Universities into a complement of private 
corporations, and then, of course, were fairly defeated in their 
summary attempt, to deal with these private and sectarian Col- 
leges as with cosmopolite and Christian schools. It may, indeed 
it must, before long become a question how far the Colleges of 
Oxford and Cambridge shpuld remain exclusive foundations. 
This question is, however, one of complicated difficulties, from 
the confliction, in every form and degree, of public expediency 
and private rights ; — difficulties, which can hardly admit of an 
equitable solution by any general measure, but would require a 
special adjustment and compromise in the case of almost every 
separate corporation. In some Colleges the fellowships could, 
without injustice, be at once thrown open, and unconditionally 
presented as the rewards of academical distinction; in others 
this could not be effected perhaps at all, or not without an ade- 
quate compensation. But the University and its education are 
not in the very least dependent on the Colleges ; and, in so far 
as these may be desirous of constituting a part of the general 
academical system, they were completely under the control of the 
University and State. The Colleges, as strictly limited to the 
members of their own foundations, are, indeed, governed by their 
private statutes and emancipated from the visitation of the Uni- 
versity ; but as licensed houses of superintendence and tuition for 
the academical youth in general, they can either, by the Univer- 



510 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND DISSENTERS— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

sity and nation, be deprived of their license altogether, or this 
conceded to them under any conditions which the public corpo- 
ration or the state may find it expedient for the general advant- 
age to impose. In so far as Colleges have, latterly, been opened 
to independent members, they are tantamount to Halls ; and 
Halls were always subject to the regulations of the University. 
In our last article, we were wrong in not taking this distinction ; 
and in admitting that, as the Colleges would not be compelled to 
receive any independent members at all, they could not be pre- 
vented from making a selection if they did. But the University 
has a right to say : The Houses which we privilege to receive 
students, these we authorize every student to enter ; the Colleges 
must therefore admit all willing to conform to their economy, or 
none. And considering them as incorporations, if their fellow- 
ships were thrown open as prizes of literary merit, they would of 
course contribute powerfully to the prosperity of the University ; 
but if, as at present, they continued only to crowd the hive with 
drones, it would still be the fault of the University were they 
suffered any longer to operate as a direct impediment to its util- 
ity, by usurping, for their fellows, functions which they are rarely 
competent to perform. 

But to return to our argument : To complicate questions of so 
clear and simple a solution as the right of Dissenters to admission 
into the national Universities, and the proper mode of rendering 
that right available, with the difficult and raveled problems 
touching the various collegiate foundations of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, is, to say the least of it, in every point of view, highly 
inexpedient. It is often easy to drive a wedge where it is impos- 
sible to pass a needle. The great measure of a restoration of the 
University, in Oxford and Cambridge, to legal existence and un- 
exclusive nationality could not be resisted ; while the compara- 
tively petty measure of opening, brevi manu, the English Col- 
leges to the Dissenters was successfully opposed. A restoration 
of the University is, in fact, the only mode through which the 
Dissenters ought to condescend to accept admission — into Oxford 
at least. They were plainly told by a member of that University, 
an active supporter of their rights in Parliament (Mr. Vernon 
Smith), that a hunted cur, with a kettle at his tail, was but a 
type of the manner in which a Dissenter would be baited in an 
Oxford College, under the spirit of the present system. Let that 
.system be changed. Let the Tutorial instruction be elevated, 



RIGHTS OF PUBLIC TRUSTEES. 511 

the Professorial re-established and improved. Let. the youth of 
the University no longer imbibe only the small prejudices of small 
men. Let them be again presented with a high standard of eru- 
dition and ability. Let the public schools once more daily collect 
them in numerous classes to hear the words of wisdom and libe- 
rality, and to merge in a generous, sustained, and universal emu- 
lation, the paltry passions and contemptible distinctions which 
the isolation of the College coteries now breeds and fosters. Then 
will a Dissenter be as sure of civility and respect in Oxford, as 
in Leyden, (xottingen, Edinburgh, or even Cambridge. But in 
point of fact, if that be worthy of the attempt, the surest way of 
conquering an entrance into the Colleges is to make the Univer- 
sity accessible — and not through them. Let the University again 
be patent to every sect, with the Halls in the course of restora- 
tion ; and, like a sulky Boniface, with the fear of a rival hostelry 
before his eyes, every Head of every College will, cap in hand, 
be fain to waylay the Dissenters at its gate, with bows and 
smiles, and a " "Walk in, gentlemen ! — Pray, w T alk in !" Decided 
symptoms, indeed, of this spasmodic complaisance have already 
been manifested. 

It would be a sign of marvelous simplicity to believe, that the 
opposition of the Collegial interest to the admission of Dissenters 
is principally, if at all, determined by religious differences and 
religious motives. If this admission were for the temporal ad- 
vantage of the present usurpers of the University, we should hear 
no hypocritical clamor about their spiritual obligations. Their 
conscience is merely a stalking-horse, moved by their interest, 
and to conceal it. We make no allegations which we can not 
prove. They protest, with tragic emphasis, against the admission 
of Dissenters ; because, they say, they are bound by their aca- 
demic oaths and statutes to exclude them. "We are soon to show, 
that these statutes can be modified or rescinded by the state, and 
consequently the oath relieved. Their clamor is, therefore, idle. 
But we shall admit their hypothesis, and prove their hypocrisy 
notwithstanding. Suppose a legislature to impose two obliga- 
tions ; one comparatively strong, one comparatively weak. If, in 
these circumstances, a man can habitually violate the former, how 
shall he be designated should he vociferate against the constitu- 
tional repeal of the latter as an outrage on his conscience ? — But 
this is not so strong as the case under consideration. The aca- 
demic legislature of Oxford imooses two such obligations. The 



512 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

stronger, that, to observance of its Statutes, is established on a 
solemn oath, which is allowed only to be deliberately taken by 
members after attaining the age of sixteen. The iveaker, that, 
to a belief in the Thirty-nine Articles, is established only on sub- 
scription; and so slight is the obligation held to be, by the very 
authority imposing it, that this subscription is lightly required 
(not merely of young men of sixteen, as marvelously stated by 
the Bishop of Exeter and all others in Parliament, but) of chil- 
dren entering the University, at the tender age of twelve. Now, 
with what face can the very men who have clone two things : — 
in the first place, systematically outraged the stronger and more 
sacred obligation of the academic oath ; and, in the second, done 
all in their power to attenuate to zero the weaker and less sacred 
obligation of the academic subscription: — with what face can 
they, when it is proposed by the state, to repeal this subscription, 
gravely call out against that measure as u a persecution" — as a 
compelling them "to be parties to the desecration of what they 
hold to be most sacred, and to the destruction of what they deem 
to be the most valuable in this life, because it is connected with 
the interests of the life to come ?•" — [Bishop of Exeter's Speech, 
pp. 9, 10, 13.) — Have they not done tins former? Has the colle- 
gial interest not frustrated every fundamental Statute of the Uni- 
versity — every statute opposed to its own usurpation of every 
necessary academic function ? Have its Heads not themselves 
"desecrated" and compelled all others "to be parties to the dese- 
cration of what they hold [or ought to hold] to be most sacred, 
and to the destruction of what they deem [or ought to deem] most 
valuable in this life, because it is connected with the interests of 
the life to come" — their solemn oaths ?— They have equally done 
the latter. As we formerly observed — and that previous to the 
agitation of the present question of the Dissenter's claim — the 
Heads have violated not only their moral and religious obligations 
to the University and the country, but in a particular manner 
their duty to the Church of England. By law, Oxford is not now 
unconditionally an establishment for the benefit of the English 
nation ; it has been for centuries an establishment only for the 
benefit of those in community with the English Church. But 
the Heads well knew, that the man will subscribe thirty-nine 
articles which he can not believe, who* swears to do and to have 
done a hundred articles which he can not, or does not, perform. 
In this respect, private usurpation was for once more (perversely) 



EIGHTS OF PUBLIC TRUSTEES. 513 

liberal than public law. Under the illegal system, Oxford has 
virtually ceased to be the seminary of a particular sect ; its gov- 
ernors impartially excluding all religionists or none. Nor is this 
all. The natural tendency of the academical ordeal was to sear 
the conscience of the patient to every pious scruple ; and the ex- 
ample of "the accursed thing" committed and enforced by "the 
priests in the high places," extended its pernicious influence from 
the Universities, throughout the land. England became the 
country in Europe proverbial for a disregard of oaths ; and the 
English Church, in particular, was abandoned, as a peculiar prey, 
to the cupidity of men allured by its endowments, and educated 
to a contempt of all religious tests. 1 

"We are thus convinced that the Collegial interest in Oxford 
have scruples, few and lightly overcome, to the admission of Dis- 
senters, viewed as a measure per se. The consequences of that 
measure alone affright them. — In the first place, the Heads could 
not expect to find in the religionists of other sects, patients equal- 
ly submissive in swallowing their catholicon of false swearing as 
members of the church in which they themselves stand high in 
station and authority ; and any controversy on this point would 
inevitably determine a public inquiry into their stewardship, 
which they might be conscious it could not endure. Farewell 
then to the suspension of the University, and the usurpation of 
Tuition by the College Fellows. In the second place, an increas- 
ed resort to the University would necessarily occasion an increase 
in the number of privileged Houses ; and consequently either 
divide the unconstitutional authority of the Heads, or (what is 
more probable) accelerate its end. The collegial interest, from 
sordid motives, is thus naturally opposed to the admission of the 
Dissenters ; but if that admission can not be avoided, the same 
sordid motives will influence their conduct under that alternative. 
Be sure, there will be no strike, for conscience sake, of the Fel- 
low-Tutors, and the College Heads, as threatened by the Bishop 
of Exeter and Sir Robert Inglis. The interlopers will be found 



1 [A signal proof of the accuracy of this deduction was manifested in Oxford, not 
long after the publication of this paper. I refer to the doctrine there promulgated 
touching the subscription of religious articles in a non-natural sense. This doctrine 
professedly holds, that such articles need not be believed by the subscriber, aa intend 
ed by the imposer of the obligation, but may be taken in any meaning in which he, 
the subscriber, may choose to understand them. " Non-natural subscription" is, in 
deed, the natural result of the illegal system, so long tolerated in the English Univer 
sities ; but I had hardly expected that this result would be thus openly avowed.] 

Kk 



514 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

to stick to their job and wages, till turned out to make room for 
the regular workmen they have illegally expelled. In fact, the 
Heads have already left their two parliamentary champions in 
the lurch. We showed, in our last Number, how admission into 
an English University did not constitutionally depend on admis- 
sion into a College ; and thus obviated all rational objection to 
the Dissenters' claim. But as the restoration of the University 
and Halls was of more immediate danger to their interest than 
the admission of Dissenters to the Colleges (the latter being 
mainly opposed only as a mean toward the former) ; and as the 
possibility of absolute exclusion, under circumstances, could no 
longer be expected ; the Heads, throwing to the winds every 
dread vaticination of their parliamentary organs, prudently de- 
termined to choose of two evils the least, and had actually agreed 
to propose in Convocation a repeal of the Academic Test. But 
lest it might ever possibly be imagined that this change of meas- 
ures was determined by any new light thrown upon their duty, 
it curiously happened, that hardly had the project of repeal been 
by them resolved on, than the reforming "Whigs were dismissed, 
and the Tory conservatives recalled to power. Forthwith, their 
resolution ivas rescinded ! 

But to return : — Will Dr. Philpotts and Sir Robert Inglis con- 
scientiously deny, that a public trust was confided to the Oxford 
Heads, and that this trust has been by them betrayed ? If they 
can not, they must either desert their principles, or join with us 
in calling for a deprivation of these unfaithful stewards. 

II. The reasoning from the second place — the Obligation of 
the Academic Oath — is to the following purport : — All members 
of the English Universities are bound by the most solemn oaths 
to maintain and observe the academical statutes : — These statutes 
prohibit the admission of Dissenters ; — Therefore, in the first 
place, the passing of the Dissenters' Bill in Parliament, by caus- 
ing a confliction between the law of the state and the law of the 
University, would constrain the administrators and teachers of 
Oxford and Cambridge, either to violate their spiritual obligations, 
or to sacrifice their temporal interests ; while, in the second, 
members of either House of Parliament who are, or have been, 
members of either University, would, by supporting or not oppo- 
sing the claim of the Dissenters, incur the guilt of perjury. 

This reasoning, though allowed to pass in Parliament, has every 
vice of which reasoning is capable. — It is, in the first place, harm- 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE ACADEMIC OATHS. 515 

less to those against whom it is directed ; and, in the second, fatal, 
not only to the special case in question, but to the general cause 
of those by whom it is employed. We shall consider it in this 
twofold relation : — 1°, As an argument against the Dissenters ; 2°, 
As an argument by the Collegial interest. 

1. As an Argument against the Dissenters. — The validity of 
this argument supposes the truth of one or other of two assump- 
tions, both of which are utterly, and even notoriously false. It 
supposes, either that the sovereign legislature has not the right of 
making and unmaking the statutes of the national schools, or that 
a competent authority having once imposed an oath to the observ- 
ance of certain laws, the same authority can not afterward re- 
lieve from that obligation, when it abrogates the very laws to 
which that oath is relative. Of these assumptions, the latter is 
sufficiently refuted by the very terms of its statement, and the 
former requires only a removal of the grossest ignorance to make 
its absurdity equally palpable. 

It will not be contended that the King, Lords, and Commons, 
can not do that to which the King singly is competent. If, there- 
fore, it can be shown that the Crown, alone, has the right either 
of sole or paramount legislation in the English Universities, it will 
not be maintained that this right is null, when exercised by the 
Crown, plus the two Houses of Parliament. Again : it will not 
be pretended that Universities have in themselves any native 
right of legislation, or that they can exercise such right other- 
wise than as a power delegated to them for public purposes by 
the supreme authority in the state. But if the supreme authority 
can delegate, it can consequently perform a function ; and, there- 
fore, all academical legislation) however absolutely devolved, is of 
its very nature subordinate to, and controllable by, the authority 
on which it is dependent for existence. But, in regard to the 
English Universities, the case is far weaker ; there has, in fact, 
to them been either no delegation at all, or this delegation has 
been only partial and precarious. 

In regard to Cambridge — and to the oaths taken in that Uni- 
versity in observance of its statutes, Sir Robert Inglis confines 
himself 1 — there can be no doubt or difficulty whatever. The 

1 [ Why has the Member for Oxford confined himself to the University of Cambridge ? 
Perjury can be rebutted, as it can be established, more easily and conclusively, where, 
as in Oxford, the Statutes have been fully and authoritatively published, than where, as 
in Cambridge, they have not.] 



516 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

Crown has there never delegated, except in mere matters of 
detail, the power of legislation to any academical body. The 
whole organic laws of that University flow immediately from the 
King ; and the King may at any moment withdraw all or any 
of the statutes, and relieve from all or any of the oaths, which it 
has pleased him to impose. The Royal Statutes minutely de- 
termine the academic constitution, the organization of teachers, 
the mode and the conditions of instruction and exercise ; while 
there is only permitted to the Chancellor and a majority of the 
Heads of Houses the interpretation of what in these statutes may 
be found doubtful or ambiguous 1 ( Stat. Eliz. cap. 50) ; and to 
the Chancellor and whole University the privilege of ratifying 
new laws conducive to the welfare of the institution, but this 
only in so far as these Graces do not derogate from, nor prejudice, 
the statutes established by the Crown (Stat. Eliz. cap. 42). Not- 
that the actual state of that University is legal, or the oaths taken 
by all for observance of the statutes are not there, as in Oxford, 
broken by all, for the private advantage of the academical rulers. 
But, speaking of Cambridge, as existing not in reality but in 
law : in that seminary, the Crown has only to remove the im- 
pediment which it originally placed to the admission of Dissenters ; 
and the University will be at once restored to its natural state, 
of a national, of a European school. It may, however, be noticed, 
as characteristic of the opposition now made to the Dissenters, 
that the very men who, in Cambridge, coolly take and deliberately 
violate every solemn oath to the observance of the established 
statutes, when contrary to their petty interests, do, when these 
petty interests persuade, vociferate before Grod and man, that they 
are to be robbed either of their salvation or subsistence ; because, 
forsooth, perjury would be imposed on them by the non-enforce- 
ment of a non-existent law ! Strange, that the throats which thus 
pleasantly can bolt a camel, should be so painfully constricted at 
the prospective phantom of a gnat ! 

In Oxford, although the Crown has permitted to Convocation 
a greater measure of legislative power than in Cambridge to the 
Senate ; it has done this only in conjunction with, and in subor- 
dination to itself. The King has here always continued to exert, 
both the power of original legislation, and the power of control- 

1 ["The benign interpretations" (to use Sergeant Miller's expression) of the Cam- 
bridge Heads, have, however, in the teeth of oath and statute, been perverted into an 
actual legislation. See above, p. 414, 415, note.] 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE ACADEMIC OATHS. 517 

ling the acts of the academical body to which it has pleased him 
to depute the partial and subordinate exercise of this power. 
The deplorable ordinance by which the ancient and natural con- 
stitution of the University was subverted, and its efficiency there- 
after gradually annihilated — (we mean the Caroline statute, which 
conferred on the Heads of Houses the guardianship of the old and 
the initiative of the new laws- — i. e., abandoned the welfare of the 
national school to the perfidy of a private body incompetent to its 
maintenance, and directly interested in its ruin) — is an example 
of a royal statute, which, we trust, will, before long, by another 
royal statute, be repealed. The history of the University does 
not afford a single instance of the subordinate legislature (the 
House of Convocation) venturing to reject a statute prescribed by 
the paramount lawgiver (the King) ; while all enactments of any 
general importance, as, for example, the ratification of the code 
of statutes, were not only rendered valid by the royal confirma- 
tion, but these, though formally originating in the University, 
were usually, in fact, enjoined to the academical legislature by 
the Sovereign. But not only does the academical legislature of 
Oxford enjoy no rights available against the state ; in point of 
fact, the body to which alone the legislative power was originally 
intrusted, does not now exist ; the delegation is consequently at 
an end. The country, the King, and the University, confided the 
right of subordinate legislation in the national school of Oxford to 
a body of men notoriously qualified to this important function, by 
a certain known and statutory course of public instruction, exer- 
cise, and examination. That necessary, that privileged course of 
education is no longer given ; with the qualifying condition, the 
qualified body is virtually at an end ; and, with the actual sus- 
pension of the University education, the right of University legis- 
lation ought likewise to be suspended. The pretended rights of 
that perjured interest which now usurps the place of the Univer- 
sity, and of the instruments through whom it ostensibly carries 
on the acts, of what, in law and reason, no longer exists, are 
treated with too much deference, when treated with derision. 

Thus to the Crown alone- — ex abundantia, to the Crown and the 
two Houses of Parliament in conjunction, does the supreme right 
belong of repealing, as of ratifying, the statutes of either Univer- 
sity. What then becomes of the argument, that the repeal of the 
academic tests by King, Lords, and Commons, as it could not 
alter the academic statutes to which the members of the two 



518 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND DISSENTERS— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

Universities are sworn, would consequently reduce the academical 
authorities to the alternative of perjury or resignation ? 

2. As an argument by the Collegial interest. — But as the prin- 
ciple (which no moral intelligence can dispute), that the State 
should by no act occasion, countenance, or permit the crime of 
perjury among its subjects, is found wholly irrelevant, as applied 
by the advocates of the interloping interest in the Universities, 
against the Dissenters ; let us try how the same principle will 
work, when retorted against the very party in whose hands it has 
proved so ineffectual a weapon. 

In the first place, it will be admitted, that it is the common 
duty of every member of the national legislature to do all that in 
him lies to obviate the causes, and to quell the perpetration of 
so grievous a sin in any class or department of the community ; 
and that the obligation of this duty rises, in proportion as the 
atrocity of the crime, and its contagious virulence, are enhanced 
by the social rank and sacred character of the perjurers. But 
when a violation, the most aggravated, of the religious bond 
itself, is committed in the act of sacrificing the greatest of all 
public trusts on the altar of a private interest ; the sufferance of 
the perjury and malversation by the national legislature for one 
unnecessary moment after its exposure, becomes a reproach to 
every representative of the country who hesitates to raise his 
voice against the abomination. 

Of all nations in the world, past or present, Pagan or Christ- 
ian, the English is the one infamous for a contempt of religious 
obligations ; and if on any national wickedness the wrath of Grod 
is to be visited, we may soon have reason to lament with Jere- 
miah, that "because of swearing the land mourneth." Confining 
ourselves to Episcopal authorities : — Bishop Sanderson (in his 
Prelections on the Obligations of an Oath, delivered in the Uni- 
versity of Oxford, nearly two centuries ago) warns his country- 
men, that " as the harvest of universal perjury is already white 
and ready for the sickle, so perfidious and profane a people ought 
to dread an utter extirpation at the hands of the divine justice ;" 
and he mainly attributes the grievous calamities of his generation 
to the endemic crimes of useless swearing and hypocritical per- 
jury. Bishop Berkeley, in his Essay toward preventing the 
Ruin of Great Britain, near a century thereafter, enumerates, 
among the principal causes of our decline, false swearing: — "a 
national guilt which we possess in a very eminent degree ; there 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE ACADEMIC OATHS. 519 

being no nation under the sun, where solemn perjury is so com- 
mon ; — in so much that men nowadays break their fast and a 
custom-house oath with the same peace of mind." He then calls 
on the legislature to adopt means toward its prevention ; " for 
whatever measures are taken, so long as we lie under such a load 
of guilt as national perjury and national bribery, it is impossible 
we can prosper." 

But if the perjury of England stand pre-eminent in the world, 
the perjury of the English Universities, and of Oxford in particu- 
lar, stands pre-eminent in England. 

In Oxford, not only is the nation defrauded of nearly all the 
benefits, for the sake of which this the most important of all 
national corporations was specially organized and exclusively priv- 
ileged ; but the moral and religious well-being of the people sus- 
tains an injury, for which the sorry instruction still attempted in 
the place affords but a slender compensation. The exclusive priv- 
ileges which Oxford and Cambridge still retain, render them the 
necessary or the favored portals through which, in England, the 
church and the professions must be entered ; and thus the En- 
glish Universities continue by these privileges to be thronged, 
when the conditions on which they were conceded are no longer 
fulfilled. Compared with Oxford as it is, there is not a European 
University, out of England, where the circle of academical instruc- 
tion attempted is so small ; and where the little taught is (in gen- 
eral) taught by so inadequate a teacher. But if the youth of 
England can, in Oxford, learn less of speculative knowledge than 
in any other Christian University, they have, however, here a 
school of practical morality and religion, such as no Christian 
University, out of England, is competent to supply. Oxford is 
now a national school of perjury. The Intrant is made to swear 
that he will do, what he subsequently finds he is not allowed to 
perform. The Candidate for a degree swears that he has done, 
what he has been unable to attempt ; and perjures himself, by 
accepting, from a perjured Congregation, an illegal dispensation 
of performances indispensable by law. The Professor swears to 
lecture as the statutes prescribe, and he does not. The reverend 
Heads of Houses, the academical executive, swear to see that the 
laws remain inviolate, and the laws are violated under their 
sanction ; they swear to be vigilant for the improvement of the 
University, and in their hands the University is extinguished ; 
they swear to prevent all false oaths, and, for their own ends, 



520 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND DISSENTERS— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

they deliberately incur the guilt of perjury themselves, and anx- 
iously perpetuate the universal perjury of all under their con- 
trol. The academic youth have thus the benefit of early prac- 
tice and of high example. They here behold at what account 
religious obligations are held by the very guardians of the sanc- 
tuary ; and how lightly their spiritual guides sacrifice to tempo- 
ral advantage their own eternal interests, and those of all confided 
to their care. Is it marvelous that England is a by-word among 
the nations, when the fountains of English morality and religion 
are thus poisoned at their source ? How long is this to be en- 
dured ? 

But, in the second place, it is not only the common duty of 
every national representative, to see that no perjury be tolerated 
in any quarter, and least of all, in the very well-springs of public 
religion and morality, the privileged national schools ; it is in a 
still higher degree, the especial duty of those members of the 
Legislature, who are also members of either University, to take 
care that every thing be done by Parliament toward upholding 
the statutes of these establishments, which they themselves have 
solemnly sworn to observe. On this ground, Sir Robert Inglis 
called, in the most emphatic language, on those members of the 
House of Commons who had taken the academic oaths, to oppose, 
on the alternative of perjury, the passing of the Dissenters' Bill ; 
and this on the hypothesis, that by no act of the national Legis- 
lature could a University statute be repealed, and those relieved 
of their obligation who had sworn to its observance. "We have 
already shown, that such an hypothesis is null ; and shall not 
attribute to Sir Robert the absurdity of holding, that oaths to 
obey a code of laws preclude the swearer from ever co-operating 
toward its improvement, by the modification or repeal of inexpe- 
dient enactments. — But if ineffectual against others, is Sir 
Robert's argument inconclusive against himself? He certainly 
challenges the retort. "I know," he says, "how unpopular the 
practice is in this House of ever referring to the oaths which any 
honorable member has taken, but I will not shrink from that 
duty ;" and after adjuring them by their religious obligations, 
he assures his opponents " that I do not quote these oaths in any 
other spirit than that in which I would wish them to address 
me, if they believed that on any occasion I was incurring the 
risk of violating any such engagement." We shall put him to 
the test. 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE ACADEMIC OATHS. 521 

Sir Robert has solemnly made oath in Oxford, once at matric- 
ulation, and thrice at least at the various steps of graduation, 
" ad observandum omnia statuta, privilegia, consuetudines el 
libertates hujus Universitatis ;" and this oath he himself explains 
as obligating, not merely to a passive compliance with the statu- 
tory enactments, hut to an active maintenance of their authority. 
" It hinds," he says, " the party to maintain, not only the honor 
and dignity of the University, but even the statutes and ordi- 
nances.'''' 

Now, Sir Robert is far more than a man of sense- and honor ; 
yet as a mere man of sense and honor, and referring him for 
proof to our two articles on the English Universities [Nos. iv. v.] 
we know and assert that he can not, and will not deny, the fol- 
lowing propositions : — 1°, That Oxford de facto, and Oxford de 
jure, are fundamentally different — nay, diametrically opposite. 
2°, That all members of the University are sworn to the observ- 
ance of the statutes thus violated and reversed. 3°, That those 
proceeding to a degree without fulfilling all indispensable condi- 
tions, are declared perjured by statute, and no graduate now ful- 
fills even the most important of these. 4°, That the Heads of 
Houses are appointed to watch over the faithful observance of the 
statutes, and "decreed guilty of violated trust and perjury, if by 
their negligence or sloth any statute whatever be allowed to fall 
into desuetude," and through them every fundamental statute is 
suspended. 5°, That the Heads of Houses possess the initiative 
of every legislative enactment, and have yet neither brought, nor 
allowed to be brought, into Convocation, any measure tending to 
put an end to this state of illegality and universal perjury. — These 
facts (of which we have fully explained the how and why) Sir 
Robert Inglis will not, we are assured, as an honorable, not to 
say religious, man, deny ; for disprove them, we know, he can not. 
"We call on him therefore, to fulfill his professions — "to uphold the 
Universities, and maintain their Statutes, as bound in the strong- 
est manner by solemn oaths." " We ask" (his own words) " the 
honorable member to consider the nature of the oath which he so 
solemnly took. If there be faith in man — if there be any use in 
religious instruction," any confidence in religious profession, we 
conjure the representative of Oxford University to lend the valu- 
able aid of his character and talents in restoring that venerable 
seminary to a state of law and usefulness-^— to raise it at least 
from religious opprobrium to religious respectability. 



522 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

In like manner, and on the same hypothesis — if the Bishop of 
Exeter would not prove a traitor to his sacred character — -if, as 
he says, he would " keep inviolate his academic oath," and not 
" become a party to the desecration of what he holds to be most 
sacred, and to the destruction of what he deems to be most valu- 
able in this life, because it is connected with the interests of the 
life to come," he will actively co-operate to the same hallowed 
end. 

But there is another and a more important ally who is bound 
by the most transcendent duty to lend his aid to the cause — we 
mean the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, the Duke of 
"Wellington. On his installation in that distinguished office, he 
made public and solemn oath to "defend and to keep entire (tueri 
et conservare) all and each of the statutes, liberties, customs, rights, 
and privileges of that University without partiality, well, and 
faithfully, to the best of his ability, and in so far as they should 
be brought to his knowledge.' 1 '' The Chancellor is the supreme 
magistrate of the public corporation of the University ; not of 
the private corporations of the Colleges. His oath binds him to 
maintain the legal integrity of the University, and University 
alone ; he is clothed with power to prevent the breach or frustra- 
tion of any of its statutes ; which, if he knowingly permit, he is 
proclaimed by academic law " a perjured violator of his trust," 
and the pedestal of his dignity is converted into the pillory of his 
shame. But we have better hopes of the Duke of Wellington. 
He is not the man to compromise the interests of his glory to the 
paltry ends of any ; nor will he allow himself, we are assured, to 
be played as their puppet — there ame damnee — by such a body 
as the Oxford Heads. His speeches on the Dissenters' Admission 
Bill show him to have been grossly misled in regard to the nature 
of the academic oath ; but his error was then excusable. It is, 
however, his duty not to remain obstinate in ignorance. This 
excuse may have been competent to former Chancellors ; it is not 
to the present ; and let him study the subject for himself, or let 
him obtain the opinion of any respectable lawyer, and, sure we 
are, the present Chancellor of the University of Oxford will not be 
on the list of its perjured betrayers. 

But, we have heard it said, that, admitting the truth of our 
allegations, it is for the interest of religion to cloak the offenses 
of its ministers, while the terms, " perjured violators of their 
trust," &c, though appropriate to the offense, and not unsuitable 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE ACADEMIC OATHS. 523 

to ordinary offenders, are, at the best, harsh and unseemly when 
applied to a class of dignified divines. To this, we answer : 

In the first place, these, the severest epithets we use, are those 
of the Statutes themselves, which confer upon the Heads of Houses 
a public authority to abuse ; and are by them prospectively 
affixed to the very lowest degree of that abuse, of which we have 
been obliged to characterize the very highest. The statutes 
apply them to the only breach of trust which the legislature 
contemplated as possible, the less careful enforcement of some 
unessential enactment ; we, to the deliberate and interested frus- 
tration of every fundamental law. In fact, if the thing is to be 
said at all, unless 

" Oaths are but words, and words but wind," 
it can be said in no other, no milder terms. 

In the second place, it is blasphemous to hold that religion ia 
to be promoted by veiling the vices of its ministers ; and foolish 
not to see that these vices are directly fostered by concealment 
and toleration. 

In the third place, so far is the sacred profession of the offen- 
ders from claiming for them a more lenient handling of their 
offense, it imperiously calls down upon their heads only a severer 
castigation. The holier the character of the criminal, the more 
heinous the aggravation of the crime. The lesion of moral and 
religious principle in the delinquent himself, and the baneful 
influence of his example on society, are in the present instance 
carried to their climax by the very circumstance that the " per- 
jured violators of their trust" had clothed themselves with the 
character of religious teachers ; and in virtue of that character 
alone were enabled to manifest to the world a detestable proof of 
how diametrically opposite might be the practice and the precept 
of a priesthood. It is not that one man forswears himself in a 
smock frock, another in a cassock and lawn sleeves — it is not 
that an illiterate layman commits in ignorance a single act, and 
a graduated churchman perpetrates half a lifetime of perjury, 
with full consciousness of the transgression and its atrocity — it 
is not that the former gains a dinner and contempt, by cheating 
government of a few pounds, the latter wealth and consideration 
by violating his public trust, and defrauding the church, the 
professions, the country, of their education- — it is not that the 
one offender may grace the pillory, the other the pulpit and the 
House of Peers ; — these are not surely circumstances that can 



524 ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND DISSENTERS.— (SUPPLEMENTAL.) 

reverse the real magnitude of the two crimes, either in the esti- 
mation of Grod, or in the eyes of reasonable men. Why, then, 
repress the moral indignation that such delinquency arouses ? 
"Why stifle the expression in which that indignation clothes itself? 
But though there be no call for such restraint, we have imposed 
it. "We have spoken plainly, as in duty bound, but without ex- 
aggeration as without reserve. 

" Dicenda pictis res phaleris sine, 
Et absque palpo. Discite strenuum 
Audire Verum. Me sciente 
Fabula non peragetur ulla. 

" Non est meum descendere ad oscula 
Impura Famae et fingere bracteas ; 
Lavisque luctari superbis, 
Aut nimias aeuisse laudeis." 

Nor do we hazard our imputations, if unfounded, with impunity 
We do not venture an attack, either agreeable in itself, or where 
defeat would be only fatal to the defender. We deeply feel, that 
the accusation of a betrayal of trust, self-seeking and perjury, to 
whomsoever applied, is of the most odious complexion ; and that 
the accuser, if he fail in establishing his proof, receives, and ought 
to receive, from public indignation, an almost equal measure of 
disgrace with that reserved for the accused, if unable to repel the 
charge. But when this charge is preferred against a body of men, 
the presumption of whose integrity is founded on their sacred 
character as clergymen, on their hallowed obligations as the 
guides, patterns, instructors of youth, and on their elevated sta- 
tion as administrators of the once most venerable school of religion, 
literature and science in the world ; what must be our conviction 
of its importance, of its truth and evidence, when we have not 
been deterred from the painful duty of such an accusation, by the 
dread of so tremendous a recoil ! 

And in reference to the actual Heads, it is now nearly four 
years since we first exposed the fact and the illegality of the 
present suspension of the University, with the treason and perjury 
through which that suspension was effected, and is maintained. 
In our exposition we were, however, anxious to spare, as far as 
possible, the living guardians of the University and its laws, and 
to attribute rather to an extreme, an incredible, ignorance of their 
duty, what would otherwise resolve into a conscious outrage of the 
most sacred obligations. But since that period the benefit of this 
excuse has been withdrawn. The Heads can not invalidate the 



THE OBLIGATION OF THE ACADEMIC OATHS. 52o 

truth of our statements or the necessity of our inferences ; they 
have, therefore, in continuing knowingly, and without necessity, 
to hold on their former lawless course, overtly renounced the plea 
of ignorance and bona fides, and thus authorized every executioner 
of public justice to stamp the mark, wherewith the laws, by which 
they are constituted and under which they act, decree them as a 
body — as a body, to be branded. 1 

1 [On the false swearing practiced and imposed in Oxford and Cambridge, I may refer 
(besides Dr. Peacock's Observations, ch. ii.), to Mr. F. W. Newman's edifying Note 
99, appended to the translation (from another hand) of" The English Universities," by 
Professor Huber of Marburg, published in the year 1843. The annotation, here as in 
many other places, justly bristles against the text. Indeed, with reference to the 
original, I may remark, that the work was hardly worthy of a version, replete as it is 
with erroneous statements, in consequence, principally, of the author's want, not only 
of personal experience, but of the most indispensable sources of special information, 
besides his deficient acquaintance with academical history in general. He was con- 
fessedly without the great work on the subject, Wood's " History and Antiquities of 
the University of Oxford," &c, possessing only that author's mutilated " Historia et 
Antiquitates," &c. ; nor does he seem even to have had access to the " Corpus Statutorum 
Universitatis Oxoniensis." Dipping merely into the work, among other mistakes : — 
in Oxford, Huber confounds Schools and Halls, and knows nothing of " The Street," 
which, however, was even more celebrated in that University than in Paris and Lou- 
vain (<$ 227) ; he puzzles himself about the difference of Congregation and Convocation, 
or the Great Congregation (§ 230, note 56) ; he wholly mistakes the office and consti- 
tution of the Black Congregation (§ 257, notes 72, 80) ; he misrepresents the age of 
admission into the University, and the statutory commencement of attendance on the 
statutory public courses (§§ 299, 301, note 74); &c. &c. 

Since the above was written, I have seen the " Oxford University Statutes, trans- 
lated by G. R. M. Ward, Esq. M. A., Late Fellow of Trinity College, and Deputy High 
Steward of the University of Oxford;" 1845. I am happy to find, that all the most 
important of my statements in regard to the University of Oxford are confirmed by the 
high official authority of Mr. Ward ; and not one of them gainsaid. See his able and 
candid Preface, throughout.] 



VIII.— COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 



(July, 1833.) 

1. Rapport sur Petat de P Instruction Publique dans quelques pays 
de PAllemagne, et particulierement en Prusse. Par M. Yictor 
Cousin, Conseiller d'Etat, Professeur de Philosophie, Membre 
de l'Institut et du Conseil Royal de l'Instruction Publique. 
8vo. Nouvelle edition. Paris : 1833. 

2. Expose des Motifs et Projet de Loi sur P Instruction primaire, 
vresentes a la Chambre des Deputes, par M. le Ministre Secre- 
taire d'Etat de l'Instruction Publique. Seance du 2 Janvier, 
1833. 

The perusal of these documents has afforded us the highest 
gratification. We regard them as marking an epoch in the 
progress of national education, and directly conducive to results 
important not to France only, but to Europe The institutions 
of Grermany for public instruction we have long known and ad- 
mired. We saw these institutions accomplishing their end to an 
extent and in a degree elsewhere unexampled ; and were con- 
vinced that if other nations attempted an improvement of their 
educational policy, this could only be accomplished rapidly, sure- 
ly, and effectually, by adopting, as far as circumstances would 
permit, a system thus approved by an extensive experience, and 
the most memorable success. Our hopes, however, that the ex- 
ample of Grermany could be turned to the advantage of England, 
are but recent. What could be expected from a Parliament, which, 
as it did not represent the general interests, was naturally hostile 

1 [This article was, I believe, the first publication in this country, which called at- 
tention to what was doing in France, and had long been done in Germany, for the 
education of the people. We are indebted to Mrs. Austin (among her other admirable 
translations) for versions of this and subsequent Reports by her celebrated friend M. 
Cousin, on national education.] 



NECESSITY FOE, EDUCATING THE PEOPLE. 527 

to the general intelligence, of the people ? "What could be ex- 
pected from a Church which dreaded, in the diffusion of knowl- 
edge, a reform of its own profitable abuses ? But, though unaid- 
ed by Church or State, the progress of popular intelligence, if 
slow and partial, was unremitted. The nation became at length 
conscious of its rights : the reign of partial interests was at an 
end. A measure of political power was bestowed upon the peo- 
ple, which demanded a still larger measure of knowledge ; and 
the public welfare is henceforward directly interested in the mor- 
al and intellectual improvement of the great body of the nation. 
The education of the people, as an affair of public concernment, 
is thus, we think, determined. As the State can now only be ad- 
ministered for the benefit of all, Education, as the essential con- 
dition of the social and individual well-being of the people, can 
not fail of commanding the immediate attention of the Legislature. 
Otherwise, indeed, the recent boon to the lower orders of political 
power, would be a worthless, perhaps a dangerous gift. Intelli- 
gence is the condition of freedom ; and unless an Education Bill 
extend to the enfranchised million an ability to exercise with 
judgment the rights the Reform Bill has conceded, the people 
must still, we fear, remain as they have been, the instruments, 
the dupes, the victims of presumptuous or unprincipled ambition. 
" A man:" (says Dr. Adam Smith, who in this only echoes other 
political philosophers) — " a man, without the proper use of the 
intellectual faculties pf a man, is, if possible, more contemptible 
than even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in 
a still more essential part of the character of human nature. 
Though the State was to derive no advantage from the instruction 
of the inferior ranks of the people, it would still deserve its atten- 
tion, that they should not be altogether uninstructed. The State, 
however, derives no inconsiderable advantage from their instruc- 
tion. The more they are instructed, the less liable they are to 
the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which, among igno- 
rant nations, frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders. 
An instructed and intelligent people, besides, are always more 
decent and orderly than an ignorant and stupid one. 1 They feel 

1 The following paragraph we translate from an Austrian newspaper (Observer), 
of November, 1820. The writer is speaking of the disturbances which were then ex- 
cited in many of the German towns against the Jews, but from which the provinces 
of Austria remained wholly exempt. "In all that regards the education of the lower 
orders of the people, through national establishments of instruction, there is hardly a 



528 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

themselves, each individually, more respectable, and more likely 
to obtain the respect of their lawful superiors, and they are there- 
fore more disposed to respect those superiors. They are more 
disposed to examine, and more capable of seeing through, the 
interested complaints of faction and sedition ; and they are, upon 
that account, less apt to be misled into any wanton or unneces- 
sary opposition to the measures of Government. In free coun- 
tries, where the safety of Government depends very much upon 
the favorable judgment which the people may form of its con- 
duct, it must surely be of the highest importance that they should 
not be disposed to judge rashly or capriciously concerning it." 
{Wealth of Nations, B. v. c. 1. Art. 2.) 

Those (if there are now any) who argue against the expediency 
of universal education, are not deserving of an answer. — Those 
who, admitting this, maintain that the supply of education should, 
like other articles of industry, be left to follow the demand, for- 
get that here demand and supply are necessarily co-existent and 
co-extensive ; — that it is education which creates the want which 
education only can satisfy. — Those again who, conceding all this, 
contend that the creation and supply of this demand should be 
abandoned by the State to private intelligence and philanthropy, 
are contradicted both by reasoning and fact. — This opinion, in- 
deed, has been rarely advanced in all its comprehension. Even 
those (as Dr. Adam Smith) who argue that the instruction of the 
higher orders should be left free to private competition, still admit 
that the interference of the State is necessary to insure the edu- 
cation of the lower. All experience demonstrates this. No coun- 
tries present a more remarkable contrast in this respect than En- 
gland and Germany. In the former, the State has done nothing 
for the education of the people, and private benevolence more 
than has been attempted elsewhere ; in the latter, the Govern- 



country in Europe that, in this respect, has the advantage of the Austrian States. 
The peasant in the country, the artisan in the town, must, throughout these domin- 
ions, have given due attendance at school. Without the certificate of education and 
adequate proficiency, no apprentice is declared free of his craft ; and without exami- 
nation on the more important doctrines of religion, no marriage is solemnized. Even 
the military receive all competent instruction in the elementary branches of knowledge, 
through masters who, for this purpose, are trained to the business of teaching in the 
normal schools. But in proportion as education is diffused, is the possibility dimin- 
ished of the outbreakings of a rude ferocity ; the more universal the instruction of the 
lower orders, the more harmless becomes the influence which the ill-educated can 
exert upon the sound judgment of those who thus virtually cease to be any longer a 
part of the populace.'''' 



NECESSITY FOR EDUCATING THE PEOPLE. 529 

ment has done every thing, and left to private benevolence almost 
nothing to effect. The English people are, however, the lowest, 
the German people the highest, in the scale of knowledge. All 
that Scotland enjoys of popular education above the other king- 
doms of the British Empire, she owes to the State ; and among 
the principalities of Germany, from Prussia down to Hesse-Cassel, 
education is uniformly found tc prosper exactly in proportion to 
the extent of interference, and to the unremitted watchfulness of 
Government. The general conckision against the expediency of 
all public regulation of the higher instruction, is wholly drawn 
from particular instances of this regulation having been inexpe- 
diently applied. Even of these, the greater number are cases in 
which the State, having once conceded exclusive privileges under 
well-considered laws, never afterward interposed to see that these 
laws were duly executed, and from time to time reformed, in 
accommodation to a change of circumstances. The English Uni- 
versities, it is admitted, do not, as actually administered, merit 
their monopoly. But, from this example, we would not conclude, 
with Smith, that all privileged seminaries are detrimental. On 
the contrary, by showing that in Oxford and Cambridge the stat- 
utory constitution has been silently subverted, we should argue 
that their corruption does not originate in the law, but in its vio- 
lation ; and from the fact that, while now abandoned by the State 
to private abuse, they accomplish nothing in proportion to their 
mighty means, we should only maintain more strong^ the neces- 
sity of public regulation and superintendence to enable them to 
accomplish every thing. The interference of the Government 
may sometimes, we acknowledge, be directly detrimental ; and 
indirectly detrimental, we hold that it will always be, unless 
constant and systematic. The State may wisely establish, pro- 
tect, and regulate ; but unless it continue a watchful inspection, 
the protected establishment will soon degenerate into a public 
nuisance—- a monopoly for merely private advantage. The expe- 
rience of the last half century in Germany, has indeed completely 
set at rest the question. For thirty years, no German has been 
found to maintain the doctrine of Smith. In their generous ri- 
valry, the Governments of that country have practically shown 
what a benevolent and prudent policy could effect for the Uni- 
versity as for the school ; and knowing what they have done, 
who is there now to maintain — that for Education as for Trade, 
the State can prevent evil, but can not originate good ? 

Ll 



530 "COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

There are two countries in Europe which have excited the 
special wonder and commiseration of the honest Germans ;— won- 
der at the neglect of the government — commiseration for the 
ignorance of the people. These countries are France and En* 
gland. The following is the last sample we have encountered 
of these feelings : 

" Things incredible in Christendom. 

11 England, in which country alone there are annually executed 
more human beings than in several other countries taken together, 
suffers two millions of her people to walk about in utter ignorance, 
and abandons education to speculation and chance as a matter 
of merely private concernment; we mean the elementary instruc- 
tion of the lower orders, for learning there possesses as extensive 
wealthy, noble, [and malad ministered] establishments as are any 
where to be found upon the globe. A«cording to the documents 
before us, it appears that out of a population of nine millions and 
a half, there are above two millions without schools for their 
children. In London, according to an accurate estimate, one- 
fourth of the inhabitants are thus destitute. No wonder assured- 
ly that crime is rife ! — In France, likewise, of forty-four thousand 
communes, twenty-five thousand (more than a half) are without 
schools ; since the restoration of the King, above four hundred 
cloisters have been re-established ; but schools — "What a blessed 
contrast is presented to us by our German fatherland !'" 

Of these two partners in disgrace, France, which, even after 
the decline of popular schools consequent on the first revolution, 
remained far ahead of England in the education of the lower 
orders — France has been the first to throw off the national oppro- 
brium, and has made a glorious start in the career of improve- 
ment. The revolution of July gave the signal. Almost the first 
act of the liberated State was an attempt to meliorate the system 
of public education, of which the education of the people consti- 
tutes the foundation ; and the enterprise has been continued with 
a perseverance fully equal to its promptitude. To show how 
much has been accomplished in so short a period, we quote the 
concluding paragraph of M. Cousin's Expose. 

" In fact, gentlemen, experience is our guide. This alone have we been 
anxious to follow, and this alone have we constantly pursued. There is not 
in this law to be found a single hypothesis. The principles and the pro- 

1 Literaturzeilung fuer Deutschlands Volksschullehrer, 1824, Qu. 4. p. 40. 



M. COUSIN HIMSELF. 531 

cedures there employed have been supplied to us by facts ; it does not em- 
brace a single organic measure which has not been already successfully 
realized in practice. In the matter of public education, we are convinced, 
that it is of far greater importance to regularize and meliorate what exists, 
than to destroy, in order to invent and renovate on the faith of hazardous 
theories. It has been by laboring in conformity to these maxims, but by 
laboring without intermission, that the present administration has been 
able to bestow on this important part of the public service a progressive 
movement so vigorous and regular. But we may affirm, without any ex- 
aggeration, that there has been more done for primary education by the 
Government of July, during the last two years, than by all the other Gov- 
ernments during the preceding forty. The first Revolution was prodigal 
in promises, but took no care of their fulfillment. The Empire exhausted 
its efforts in the regeneration of secondary instruction, and did nothing for 
the education of the people. The Restoration, until the year 1828, annu- 
allv devoted 50,000 francs (£2083) to primary instruction. The Minister 
of 1828 obtained from the Chambers 300,000 francs (£12,500). The 
Revolution of July has given us annually a million (£43,330) ; that is, more 
in two, than the Restoration in fifteen years. Such were the means ; at- 
tend now to the results. You are aware, gentlemen, that primary instruc- 
tion is wholly dependent on the primary normal schools. 1 Its progress is 
correspondent to that of these establishments. The Empire, under which 
the name of primary normal school was first pronounced, left but one. The 
Restoration added five or six. We, gentlemen, in two years, have not only 
perfected those previously existing, of which some were only in their in- 
fancy, but have established more than thirty, of which twenty are in full 
exercise — forming in each department a great focus of illumination for the 
people. While Government was carrying roads through the departments 
of the West, we there disseminated schools : we were cautious in meddling 
with those dear to the habits of the country ; but have founded in the 
heart of Brittany the great normal school of Rennes, which will be soon 
productive, and surrounded it with similar establishments of different kinds 
— at Angers, at Nantes, at Poictiers. The South has at present more than 
five great primary normal schools, of which some are already, and others 
will be soon, at work. In fine, gentlemen, we believe ourselves on the 
road to good. May your prudence appreciate ours ; may your confidence 
sustain and encourage us ; and the time is not distant when we shall be 
able to declare together — ministers, deputies, departments, communes — 
that we have accomplished, in so far as in us lay, the promises of the 
Revolution of July, and of the charter of 1830, in all that more imme- 
diately relates to the education and true happiness of the people." — (P. 17.) 

Such, was the memorable progress made previous to the com- 
mencement of the present year, when the important Law on 
Primary Instruction was ratified. But this progress and this 
law were professedly the offspring of experience. Of what expe- 
rience ? Not of the experience of France — of the very country 
whose whole educational system stood in need of creation or re- 
form — but of that country whose institutions for instruction were, 
1 Seminaries for training primary schoolmasters. [A name now familiar.! 



532 COUSIN ON GE1MAN SCHOOLS. 

by all competent to an opinion, acknowledged to afford the high- 
est model of perfection. In resolving to profit by the experience 
of the Grerman states, and in particular of Prussia, we can not 
too highly applaud the wisdom of the French government. Nor 
could a wiser choice have been made of an individual to examine 
the nature of the pattern institutions, and to report in regard to 
the mode of carrying their accommodation into effect. M. Cousin, 
by whose counsel it is probable that the plan was originally re- 
commended, was, in the summer of 1831, commissioned to pro- 
ceed to G-ermany ; and his observations on the state of educa- 
tion in that country, transmitted from time to time to the Minis 
ter of Public Instruction, constitute the present Report. No one 
could certainly have been found better qualified to judge ; no one 
from whom there was less cause to apprehend a partial judgment. 
A profound and original thinker, a lucid and eloquent writer, a 
scholar equally at home in ancient and in modern learning, a 
philosopher superior to all prejudices of age or country, party or 
profession, and whose lofty eclecticism, seeking truth under every 
form of opinion, traces its unity even through the most hostile 
systems ; — M. Cousin was, from his universality both of thought 
and acquirement, the man in France able adequately to determine 
what a scheme of national education ought in theory to accom- 
plish ; and from his familiarity with Gferman literature and phil- 
osophy, prepared to appreciate in all its bearings what the Ger- 
man national education actually performs. Without wavering 
in our admiration of M. Cousin's character and genius, we freely 
expressed on a former occasion our dissent from certain principles 
of his philosophy ; and with the same sincerity, we now declare, 
that from the first page of his Report to the last, there is not a 
statement nor opinion of any moment in which we do not fully and 
cordially agree. This work, indeed, recommends itself as one of 
the most unbiassed wisdom. Once persecuted by the priests, M. 
Cousin now fearlessly encounters the derision of another party, 
as the advocate of religious education ; nor does the memory of 
national calamity and of personal wrong withhold him from pro- 
nouncing the Prussian government to be the most enlightened in 
Europe. He makes no attempt to soothe the vanity of his coun- 
trymen at the expense of truth ; and his work is, throughout, a 
disinterested sacrifice of self to the importance of its subject. 
His ingenuity never tempts him into unnecessary speculation ; 
practice, already approved by its result, is alone anxiously pro- 



COUSIN'S REPORT. 533 

posed for imitation — relative and gradual ; and the strongest 
metaphysician of France traces the failure of the educational laws 
of his country to their metaphysical character. The Report is 
precisely what it ought to be — a work of details ; bat of details 
so admirably arranged, that they converge naturally of themselves 
into general views ; while the reflections by which they are ac- 
companied, though never superficial, are of such transparent 
evidence as to command instant and absolute assent. This is, 
indeed, shown in the result. The Report was published. In 
defiance of national self-love and the strongest national antipa- 
thies, it carried conviction throughout France ; a bill framed by 
its author for primary education, and founded on its conclusions, 
was almost immediately passed into a law ; and M. Cousin him- 
self (now a peer of France), appointed to watch over and direct 
its execution. Nor could the philosopher have been intrusted 
with a more congenial office ; for, in the language of his own 
Plato — " Man can not propose a higher and holier object for his 
study, than education, and all that appertains to education." 
And M. Cousin's exertions, we are confident, will be crowned 
with the success and honor to which they are so well entitled. The 
benefit of his legislation can not, indeed, be limited to France : a 
great example has there been set, which must be elsewhere fol- 
lowed ; and other nations than his own will bless the philosopher 
for their intelligent existence. " Juventutem recte formare," says 
Melanchthon. " paulo plus est quam expugnare Trojam ;" and to 
carry back the education of Prussia into France, affords a nobler 
(if a bloodless) triumph than the trophies of Austerlitz and Jena. 
The Report of M. Cousin consists of two parts. The former, 
extending to about one-fourth of the volume, contains a cursory 
view of German education from the elementary schools up to 
the Universities, as observed during a day's stay at Frankfort, 
and a five days' journey through the states of Saxony. The latter 
is solely devoted to a detailed exposition of Prussian education, 
which the author enjoyed the most favorable opportunities of 
studying, in all its departments, during a month's residence at 
Berlin. This part is, however, not yet fully published. Of the 
four heads which M. Cousin promises to treat (viz. 1. The general 
organization of public instruction ; 2. The primary instruction | 
3. Instruction of the second degree, or the gymnasia ; 4. The 
higher instruction, or the Universities), the two first alone appear. 
We anxiously hope that nothing may occur to prevent the speedy 



534 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

publication of the last two. If we found fault, indeed, with the 
Report at all, it would be, not for what it contains, but for what 
it does not. "We certainly regret that it was impossible for M. 
Cousin to extend his observations to some other countries of Ger- 
many. Bavaria would have afforded an edifying field of study ; 
and the primary schools of Nassau are justly the theme of general 
admiration. In the present Article we must limit our considera- 
tion to the second Report ; and taking advantage of M. Cousin's 
labors, and with his principal authorities before us, we shall en- 
deavor to exhibit, in its more important features, a view of the 
organization of Primary Instruction in Prussia; reserving the 
higher and highest education — the Gymnasia and Universities — 
of G-ermany, for the subject of a future Article. 

Before entering on the matter of primary education, it is neces- 
sary to premise an account of the general organization of Public 
Instruction in Prussia. — The Ministry of Public Instruction and 
"Worship there forms a distinct department of administration. It 
is composed of a minister and a council divided into three sec- 
tions — for Worship— for Education — for Medicine ; each consist- 
ing of a certain number of Counselors and a Director. Of the 
first, the counselors are principally ecclesiastics ; and of the sec- 
ond, principally laymen. The mode in which the minister and 
his council govern all the branches of public instruction through- 
out the monarchy, is thus luminously explained by M. Cousin. 

"Prussia is divided into ten Provinces; viz., East Prussia, "West Prus- 
sia, Posen, Pomerania, Brandenburg, Silesia, Saxony, Westphalia, Cleves, 
and the Lower Rhine. 

" Each of these provinces is subdivided into Departments (Regierungs- 
bezirke) comprehending 1 a territory more or less extensive. Each of these 
departments is divided into Circles (Kreise), less than our arrondissements, 
and larger than our cantons ; and each of these circles is again subdivided 
into Communes (Gemeinde). Each department has a kind of council of 
prefecture called the Regency (Regierimg), which has its President, 
nearly correspondent to our prefect, with this difference, that the president 
of a Prussian Regency has much less power over his council than our 
prefect over his ; for, in Prussia, all affairs belong to the regency, and are 
determined by the majority of voices. As each department has its presi- 
dent, so every province has its Supreme President {Oberpracsident). 

" All the degrees of public instruction are correlative to the different 
degrees of this administrative hierarchy. Almost every province has its 
University. East and West Prussia, with the Duchy of Posen, which are 
conterminous, have the University of Koenigsberg ; Pomerania, the Univer- 
sity of Greifswald ; Silesia, that of Breslau ; Saxony, that of Halle ; Bran- 
denburg, that of Berlin; Westphalia, the imperfect University (called the 
Academy) of Munster ; the Rhenish provinces that of Bonn. Each of 



PRUSSIAN REGULATION OF INSTRUCTION IN GENERAL. 535 

these Universities has authorities appointed by itself, under the superin- 
tendence of a Royal Commissioner, named by the Minister of Public In- 
struction, with whom he directly corresponds ; a functionary answering to 
the Curator of the older German Universities. This office is always in- 
trusted to some person of consideration in the province : it is substantially 
an honorary appointment; but there is always attached to it a certain 
emolument, for it belongs to the spirit of the Prussian government to em- 
ploy very few unpaid functionaries. It is of the nature of aristocratic 
governments to have many offices without salary, as is seen in England ; 
but such a system is unsuitable to governments at once popular and mon- 
archical, like Prussia and France ; and were it carried to any length in 
either country, nothing less would ensue than a change in the form of the 
government. It would be in vain to expect that gratuitous duties would 
be performed by all the citizens adequate to their discharge ; those of small 
fortunes would soon tire of them ; they would gradually be confided to 
those of large fortunes, who, at last would govern alone. In Prussia all 
functionaries are paid ; and as no office is obtained till after rigid exami- 
nations, all are enlightened ; and moreover, as they are taken from every 
class, they carry into the discharge of their duties the general spirit of the 
country, at the same time that they contract the habits of the government. 
Here is manifested the system of the Imperial government with us ; it is 
that of every popular monarchy. A Royal Commissioner has duties which 
he is compelled to fulfill ; whatever may be his consideration in other re- 
spects, in this he is a ministerial officer, accountable to the Minister. The 
Royal Commissioners are alone intermediate between the Universities and 
the Ministry. The Universities thus hold almost immediately of the Min- 
istry'. No provincial authority, civil or ecclesiastical, has the right of in- 
terfering in their affairs ; they belong only to the state ; this is their priv- 
ilege and their guarantee. I will speak to you again in detail of their 
internal organization ; it is enough, at present, to mark the relation which 
they hold to the central administration in the general economy. 

" If the Universities belong exclusively to the state, the same is not the 
case with the schools of secondary instruction. In Prussia these are con- 
sidered as in a great measure provincial. In every province of the mon- 
archy, under the Supreme President of the province, there is an institution 
holding of the Ministry of Public Instruction, and in a certain sort repre 
senting it in its internal organization ; this institution is called the Pro- 
vincial Consistory (Provincial- Consistorium). As the Ministry is divid- 
ed into three sections, in like manner the Provincial Consistory: the first, 
for ecclesiastical affairs, or Consistory properly so called ( Consistorium) : 
the second, for public instruction, the School Board (Schtd- Collegium): 
the third, for matters relative to public health, the Medical Board (Me- 
dicinal Collegium). This Provincial Consistory is salaried : all the mem- 
bers are nominated by the Minister of Public Instruction and Worship , 
but at its head, and at the head of its sections, stands the Supreme Presi- 
dent of the Province, to whom exclusively belongs the duty of correspond- 
ence, and who in this capacity corresponds with the Minister of Public 
Instruction, who is not, however, his natural minister ; but in his quality 
of Supreme President, he corresponds with various ministers on matters 
relative to his province, although he himself holds directly of the Minister 
of the Interior. This official correspondence of the President of the prov- 
ince with the Minister of Public Instruction, is only formal, and for the 



i>36 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

sake of concentrating the provincial administration. In reality, all author- 
ity is in the hands of the Consistory, of which each section deliberates 
separately, and decides on all subjects by a majority of voices. — I shall 
here speak only of that section which is occupied with public education, 
viz., the School- Board. 

" I must first call your attention to an essential difference between the 
character of the public instruction, in Prussia, and that which it presents 
in the other states of Germany through which I passed. In these, at the 
centre, under a director or a minister, stands a Consistory, in a great meas- 
ure ecclesiastical; in Prussia, beside the minister, in place of a Consistory, 
there is a Council, divided into three parts, one of which only is clerical, 
while the other two are lay and scientific. This council has, therefore, no 
ecclesiastical character ; the sacerdotal spirit is here replaced by the spirit 
of the government ; the idea of the state predominant over all others. In 
like maimer, in each province, if the composition of the Provincial Con- 
sistory be again too ecclesiastical, its separation into three sections, like 
the Ministry of Berlin, leaves to this body nothing clerical but the name. 
No doubt, the intimate relations of the School- Board with the Consistory 
projw, and its peculiar duties, render it essentially religious ; but it is 
principally composed of lay members, and completely free in its action. 

" Its special domain is secondary education, the Gymnasia, and those 
establishments intermediate between the schools of primary and secondary 
instruction, called Progymnasia and Superior Burgher Schools (Pro- 
gymnasien, hoehere Buergerschiden). It is necessary to observe, that 
the seminaries for training teachers of the primary schools {Seminarien 
fticr Schtdlehrer) our primary norma] schools, are likewise within its 
province, and that in general it interposes on all the higher questions 
touching primary education. 

" Along with the School-Board, there is a Commission of Examina- 
tion (wissenschaftliche Pruefungs- Commission), usually composed of the 
professors of the University belonging to the province. This commission 
has two objects: — 1. To examine the pupils of the gymnasia who are 
desirous of passing to the University, or to revise the examen ad hoc, which 
these young persons sometimes undergo at the gymnasium itself (Abituri- 
entcn- Examen), by a review of the minutes and documents of this trial 
(it corresponds to our examination for Bachelor of Letters, without which 
no matriculation is competent in the Faculties); 2. To examine those 
who come forward as teachers in the gymnasia ; and here there are dif- 
ferent examinations for the different gradations of instruction — one for 
masters of the lower classes (Lehrer) — another for masters of the higher 
classes (Obcrlehrer) — a third, in fine, for rectors (correspondent to our pro- 
visors) who are always intrusted with the more important instruction. 
The first examination for simple masters {Lehrer) is the fundamental. 
The Commission of Examination is the board that connects the secondary 
instruction with the higher, as the School-Board connects the public in- 
struction in the provinces with the central ministry of Berlin. 

,: The following is, in few words, the mechanism of the administration 
of popular education : — 

" If the Universities belong exclusively to the state, and the schools of 
secondary instruction to the province, those of primary instruction pertain 
principally to the department and to the commune. 

li Every commune ought to have a school, even by the law of the state; 



PRUSSIAN REGULATION OF INSTRUCTION IN GENERAL. 537 

the pastor of the place is the natural inspector of this school, along with 
a communal committee of administration and superintendence, called 
Schulvoi stand. 

" In urban communes, where there are several schools, and establish- 
ments for primary education of a higher pitch than the common country 
schools, the magistrates constitute, over the particular committees of the 
several schools, a superior committee, which superintends all these, and 
forms them into a harmonic system. This committee is named Schul- 
deputation, or Schidcommission. 

" There is, moreover, at the principal place of the circle (Kreis) ano- 
ther inspector, whose sphere comprehends all the schools of the circle, and 
who corresponds with the local inspectors and committees. This new in- 
spector, whose jurisdiction is more extensive, is likewise almost always an 
ecclesiastic. Among the Catholics it is the dean. He has the title of 
School- Inspector of the Circle {Kreis- Schul- Inspector). 

" Thus the two first degrees of authority in the organization of primary 
instruction are, in Prussia as in the whole of Germany, ecclesiastical ; but 
with these degrees the influence wholly terminates, and the administrative 
commences. The inspector of each circle corresponds with the regency of 
each department, through its president. This regency, or council of de- 
partment, has within it departmental-counselors {Regierungsraethe) 
charged with different functions, and among others a special coiinselor 
for the primary schools, styled Schulrath ; a functionary, salaried like all 
his colleagues, and who forms the link of the public instruction, with the 
ordinary departmental administration, inasmuch as, on the one side, he is 
nominated on the presentation of the Minister of Public Instruction, and 
as, on the other, immediately on his appointment, he forms, in his quality 
of Schulrath, part of the council of regency, and thereby comes into con- 
nection with the Minister of the Interior. The Schulrath reports to the 
council, which decides by a majority. He thus inspects the schools, ani- 
mates and maintains the zeal of the Schidinspectoren, of the Schulvor- 
staende, and of the schoolmasters ; the whole correspondence of the com- 
munal inspectors, and of the superior inspectors, is addressed to him ; and 
it is he who conducts all correspondence relative to the schools, in name 
of the regency and through the president, with the provincial consistories 
and the school-board, as well as with the Minister of Public Instruction : 
in a word, the Schulrath is the real director of primary education in each 
regency. 

■' I do not here descend into any detail ; I am only desirous of making 
you aware of the general mechanism of public instruction in Prussia. In 
recapitulation : — Primary instruction is communal and departmental, and, 
at the same time, holds of the Minister of Public Instruction ; a double 
character, derived, in my opinion, from the very nature of things, which 
requires equally the intervention of local authorities, and that of a higher 
hand, to vivify and animate the whole. This double character is repre- 
sented in the Schulrath, who makes part of the Council of Department, 
and belongs at once to the ministry of the Interior, and to that of Public 
Instruction. Yiewed on another side, all secondary instruction is depend- 
ent on the School Board, which makes part of the Provincial Consistory, 
and is nominated by the Minister of Public Instruction. All higher edu- 
cation, that of the Universities, depends on the Royal Commissioner, who 
act? xmder the immediate authority of the minister. Nothing thus escapes 



538 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

the ministerial agency ; and at the same time, every sphere of public in- 
struction has in itself a sufficient liberty of operation. The Universities' 
elect their authorities. The School-Board proposes and superintends the 
professors of the gymnasia, and is informed on all the matters of any con- 
sequence regarding primary instruction. The Schulrath, with the Coun- 
cil of Regency, or rather the Council of Regency on the report of the Schul- 
rath, and after considering the correspondence of the inspectors and the 
committees, decides the greater part of the affairs of the inferior instruc- 
tion. The minister, without involving himself in the endless details of 
popular education, makes himself master of the results, directs the whole 
by instructions emanating from the centre, and extending to every quarter 
the national unity. He does-not continually intermeddle with the concerns 
of secondary instruction ; but nothing is done without his confirmation, 
and he proceeds always on accurate and complete reports. It is the same 
with the Universities ; they govern themselves, but according to the laws 
which they receive. The professors elect their Deans and their Rectors ; 
but they themselves are appointed by the minister. In the last analysis, 
the aim of the whole organization of public instruction in Prussia is to 
leave details to the local authorities, and to reserve to the minister and his 
council the direction and impulsion of the whole." 

The state of primary education in Prussia, M. Cousin exhibits 
under the two heads of the Law and its Results, i.e. : 

I. The organization of primary instruction, and the legislative 
enactments by which it is governed ; and, 

II. What these legislative enactments have accomplished, or 
the statistics of primary instruction. 

We must limit our consideration to the former head alone ; 
where M. Cousin gives in his own arrangement that portion of 
the law of 1819 — the educational digest of Prussia — which relates 
to the primary instruction. We shall endeavor to afford a some- 
what detailed view of this important section of the Report. The 
more interesting provisions of the law we shall give at large ; the 
others abbreviate or omit. 

I. — Duty of Parents to send their Children to School. 
( Schu lpflichtigkeit. ) 

n Prussia, as in other states of Germany, this duty has been 
long enforced by law. The only title of exemption is the proof 
that a competent education is furnished to the child in private. 
The obligation commences at the end of the fifth (though not 
strictly enforced till the beginning of the seventh), and terminates 
at the conclusion of the fourteenth year. None are admitted or 
dismissed from school before these ages, unless on examination, 
and by special permission of the committee of superintendence. 
During this interval, no child can remain away from school unless 



PRUSSIAN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 539 

for sufficient reasons, and by permission of the civil and ecclesias- 
tical authority ; and a regular census, at Easter and Michaelmas, 
is taken by the committees and municipal authorities, of all the 
children competent to school. Parents, tutors, and masters of 
apprentices, are bound to see that due attendance is given by 
the children under their care ; and the schoolmasters must, in a 
prescribed form, keep lists of attendance, to be delivered every 
fortnight to the committees of superintendence. Not wholly to 
deprive parents, &c, of the labors of their children, the school 
hours are so arranged that a certain time each day is left free 
for their employment at home. Do parents, &c, neglect their 
responsibility in sending their children punctually to school? — 
counsel, remonstrance, punishments, always rising in severity, 
are applied ; and if every means be ineffectual, a special tutor or 
co-tutor is assigned to watch over the education of the children. 
Jewish parents who thus offend, are deprived of their civil privi- 
leges. To the same end, the clergy, Protestant and Catholic, are 
enjoined to use their influence, to the extent and in the manner 
they may judge expedient ; their sermons, on the opening of the 
schools, ought to inculcate the duty of parents to afford their 
children education, and to watch over their regular attendance, 
and may even contain allusion to the most flagrant examples of 
these obligations neglected ; and they shall not admit any child 
to the conferences previous to confirmation and communion, with- 
out production of the certificates of education. 

In the case of necessitous parents, means are to be taken to 
enable them to send their children to school, by supplying them 
with clothing, books, and other materials of instruction. 

II. — Duty of each Commune (Gemeinde 1 ) to maintain, at its 
expense, a Primary School. 

Every commune, however small, must maintain an elementary 
school, complete or incomplete ; that is to say, either fulfilling the 
whole complement of instruction peseribed by law, or its most 
essential parts. Every town must support burgher schools, one 
or more, according to its population. Petty towns of less than 
fifteen hundred inhabitants, and inadequate to the expense of a. 
burgher school, are bound to have at least complete elementary 
schools. In case a town can not maintain separately, and in 
different tenements, an elementary and a burgher school, it is 
1 Gemeinde, commune, may, with some inaccuracy, be translated parish, 



540 . COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

permitted to employ the lower classes of the burgher as an ele- 
mentary school ; in like manner, bat only in case of manifest 
necessity, it is allowed to use, as a burgher school, the lower 
classes of the gymnasium. In towns, the Jews may establish 
schools at their own expense, if organized, superintended, and 
administered by them in conformity to the legal provisions ; they 
are likewise permitted to send their children to the Christian 
schools, but can have no share in their administration. 1 

The first concern is to provide the elementary schools required 
in the country. When possible, incomplete schools are every 
where to be changed into complete ; and this is imperative where 
two masters are required. To this end, the inhabitants of every 
rural commune are, under the direction of the public authorities, 
constituted into a Country -school-union (Landschulverein). This 
union is composed of all landed proprietors with or without 
children, and of all fathers of families domiciled within the ter- 
ritory of the commune, with or without local property. Every 
village, with the adjacent farms, should have its school-union 
and its school; but in exception. to this rule, but only as a tem- 
porary arrangement, two or more villages may unite ; if, firstly, 
one commune be too poor to provide a school ; if, secondly, none 
of the associated villages be distant from the common school 
more than two (English) miles in champaign, and one mile in 
hilly districts ; if, thirdly, there be no intervening swamps or 
rivers at any season difficult of passage ; and, fourthly, if the 
whole children do not exceed a hundred. If a village, by reason 
of population or difference of religion, has already two schools 
for which it can provide, these are not to be united ; especially 
if they belong to different persuasions. Circumstances permit- 
ting, separate schools are to be encouraged. Mere difference of 
religion should form no obstacle to the formation of a school 
union ; but, in forming such an association of Catholics and 
Protestants, regard must be had to the numerical proportion of 
the inhabitants of each persuasion. The principal master should 
profess the faith of the majority, the subordinate master that of 

1 From the statistical information subsequently given by our author, it appears that, 
in 1825, Prussia contained of inhabitants 12,256,725 ; — of public elementary schools 
for both sexes, 20,887; — of public burgher or middle schools for boys, 458 ; for girls, 
278 ; in all, 21,623 schools for primary education. In these were employed 22,261 
masters ; 704 mistresses ; and 2024 under masters and under mistresses ; primary 
teachers, in all 25,000 ;— affording public primary instruction to 871,246 boys, 792,972 
girls ; in all, to 1,664,218 children. Since that, the improvement has been rapid. 



PRUSSIAN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 541 

the minority. Jews enjoy the advantages, but are not permitted 
to interfere in the administration of these schools. If, in certain 
situations, the junction of schools belonging to different persua- 
sions be found expedient, this must take place by consent of the 
two parties. Care must, however, be taken, in case of junction, 
that each sect has the means necessary for the religious educa- 
tion of its scholars. That neither party may have cause of anxiety, 
and that whatever it contributes to the partnership may be secured 
in case of separation, the respective rights of the parties shall be 
articulately set forth, and ratified in a legal document. 

The law having ordained the universal establishment of pri- 
mary schools, goes on to provide for their support. This support 
consists in securing : 1. A suitable salary for the schoolmasters 
and schoolmistresses, and a retiring allowance when unable to 
discharge their functions ; 2. A school-house, with appertainances, 
well laid out, maintained in good order, and properly heated ; 
3. The furniture, books, pictures, instruments, and means requi- 
site for instruction and exercise ; 4. The aid to be given to needy 
scholars. — The first provision is solemnly recognized as of all the 
most important. The local authorities are enjoined to raise the 
schoolmaster's salary as high as possible. Though a general rule 
rating the amount of emolument necessarily accruing to the 
office can not be established for the whole monarchy, a mini- 
mum, relative to the prosperity of each province, is to be fixed, 
and from time to time reviewed, by the provincial consistories. — 
In regard to the second — school-houses are to be in a healthy situ- 
ation, of sufficient size, well aired, &c. ; hereafter, all to be built 
and repaired in conformity to general models. Attached, must 
be a garden of suitable size, &c, and applicable to the instruc- 
tion of the pupils ; and, where possible, before the school-house, 
a graveled play- ground, and place for gymnastic exercises. — 

1 This liberality is general throughout Germany. If we are ever to enjoy the bless- 
ings of a national education in the United Kingdom, the same principle must be uni- 
versally applied. An established church becomes a nuisance, when (as hitherto in 
England and Ireland) it interposes an obstacle to the universal diffusion of religion and 
intelligence. We trust that the boon conceded by our late monarch to his German 
dominions, may be extended, under his successor, to the British Empire. By ordinance 
of George IV. dated Carlton House, 25th June, 1822, in reference to education in the 
county of Lingen, it is decreed (although the Protestant be the established religion), 
that in all places where the majority of the inhabitants are Catholic, the principal 
schoolmaster shall be of their persuasion. The Lutheran schools to be under inspec- 
tion of the Superintendent ; the Catholic under that of the Archpriest : — both bound to 
visit the schools regularly, to examine schoolmaster and scholar, and to report to theiT 
respective consistories. (Wchigart's Journal, 1822. Heft. 4. p. 21.) 



542 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

The third provision comprises a complement of books for the 
use of master and scholar; according to the degree of the school, 
a collection of maps, and geographical instruments, models for 
drawing and writing, music, &c, instruments and collections 
for natural history and mathematics, the apparatus for gymnas- 
tic exercises, and, where this is taught, the tools and machines 
requisite for technological instruction. — In regard to the fourth, 
if there be no charity-school specially provided, every public 
school is bound to afford to the poor instruction, wholly or in 
part gratuitous ; as likewise the books and other necessaries of 
education. 

But, as considerable funds are required for the maintenance of 
a school established on such extensive bases, it is necessary to 
employ all the means which place and circumstances afford. We 
can not attempt to follow M. Cousin through this part of the law, 
however important and wisely calculated are its regulations. "We 
shall state only in general, that it is recognized as a principle, 
that as the gymnasia and other establishments of public educa- 
tion of the same rank, are principally supported at the cost of the 
general funds of the state or province; so the inferior schools 
are primarily, and, as far as possible, solely, maintained at the 
expense of the towns, and of the country-school unions. The 
support of these schools is of the highest civil obligation. In the 
towns it can be postponed to no other communal want ; and in 
the country all landholders, tenants, fathers of families, must 
contribute in proportion to the rent of their property within the 
territory of the school-union, or to the produce of their industry ; 
this either in money or kind. Over and above these general con- 
tributions, fees also (Schulgeld) regulated by the departmental 
authorities, are paid by the scholars, but not levied by the school- 
master ; unless under particular circumstances it be deemed ex- 
pedient to commute this special payment into an augmentation 
of the general contribution. 

III. — General Objects and different Degrees of Primary 
Education. 

Two degrees of primary instruction are distinguished by the 
law ; the Elementary schools and the Burgher schools. The ele- 
mentary schools {Elementarschulen) propose the development of 
the human faculties, through an instruction in those common 
branches of knowledge which are indispensable to the lower 



PRUSSIAN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 543 

orders, both of town and country. The burgher schools (Buer- 
gerschulen, Stadtschuleny carry on the child till he is capable of 
manifesting his inclination for a classical education, or for this 
or that particular profession. The gymnasia continue this edu- 
cation until the youth is prepared, either to commence his practi- 
cal studies in common life, or his higher and special scientific 
studies in the University. 

These different gradations coincide in forming, so to speak, a 
great establishment of national education, one in system, and of 
which the parts, though each accomplishing a special end, are all 
mutually correlative. The primary education of which we speak, 
though divided into two degrees, has its peculiar unity and gene- 
ral laws ; it admits of accommodation, however, to the sex, lan- 
guage, religion, and future destination of the pupils. 1. Separate 
establishments for girls should be formed, wherever possible, cor- 
responding to the elementary and larger schools for boys. 2. In 
those provinces of the monarchy (as the Polish) where a foreign 
language is spoken, besides lessons in the native idiom, the chil- 
dren shall receive complete instruction in Grerman, which is also 
to be employed as the ordinary language of the school. 3. Differ- 
ence of religion in Christian schools necessarily determines differ- 
ences in religious instruction. This instruction shall always be 
accommodated to the spirit and doctrines of the persuasion to 
which the school belongs. But, as in every school of a Christian 
state, the dominant spirit (common to all creeds) should be piety, 
and a profound reverence of the Deity, every Christian school 
may receive the children of every sect. The masters and super- 
intendents ought to avoid, with scrupulous care, every shadow 
of religious constraint or annoyance. No school should be abused 
to any purposes of proselytism ; and the children of a worship 
different from that of the school, shall not be obliged, contrary 
to the wish of their parents or their own, to attend its religious 
instruction and exercises. Special masters of their own persua- 
sion shall have the care of their religious education ; and, should 
it be impossible to have as many masters as confessions, the 
parents should endeavor, with so much the greater solicitude, 
to discharge this duty themselves, if disinclined to allow their 
children to attend the religious lessons of the school. Christian 

1 Called likewise Mittelschiden, middle schools, and Realschiden, real schools ; tho 
last, because they are less occupied with the study of languages (Verbalia) than with 
the knowledge of things (Realia), 



544 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

schools may admit Jewish children, but not Jewish schools 
Christian children. The primitive destination of every school, 
says the law, is to train youth, that, with a knowledge of the 
relations of man to God, it may foster in them the desire of rul- 
ing their life by the spirit and principles of Christianity. The 
school shall, therefore, betimes second and complete the first 
domestic training of the child to piety. Prayer and edifying 
reflections shall commence and terminate the day ; and the 
master must beware that this moral exercise do never degener- 
ate into a matter of routine. He must also see that the chil- 
dren are constant in their attendance on divine service — (with 
other regulations to a similar effect). Obedience to the laws, 
loyalty, and patriotism, to be inculcated. No humiliating or in- 
decent castigation allowed ; and corporal punishment, in general, 
to be applied only in cases of necessity. Scholars found wholly 
incorrigible, in order to obviate bad example, to be at length 
dismissed. The pupils as they advance in age, to be employed 
in the maintenance of good order in the school, and thus betimes 
habituated to regard themselves as active and useful members of 
society. 

The primary education has for its scope the development of 
the different faculties, intellectual and moral, mental and bodily. 
Every complete Elementary school necessarily embraces the 
nine following branches : — 1. Religion — morality established on 
the positive truths of Christianity ; — 2. The G-erman tongue, and 
in the Polish provinces, the vernacular language ; — 3. The ele- 
ments of geometry and general principles of drawing ; — 4. Calcu- 
lation and applied arithmetic ; — 5. The elements of physics, of 
general history, and of the history of Prussia ; — 6. Singing ; — 7. 
"Writing ; — 8. Gymnastic exercises : — 9. The more simple manual 
labors, and some instruction in the relative country occupations. 
— Every Burgher school must teach the ten following branches; 
1. Religion and morals. 2. The German language, and the ver- 
nacular idiom of the province, reading, composition, exercises of 
style, exercises of talent, and the study of the national classics. 
In the countries of the German tongue, the modern foreign lan- 
guages are the objects of an accessory study. 3. Latin to a cer- 
tain extent. 1 4. The elements of mathematics, and in particular 
a thorough knowledge of practical arithmetic. 5. Physics, and 

1 This, we believe, is not universally enforced. 



PRUSSIAN PRIMARY EDUCATION. 545 

natural history to explain the more important phenomena of 
nature. 6. Geography, and general history combined ; Prussia, 
its history, laws, and constitution, form the object of a particular 
study. 7. The principles of design ; to be taught with the in- 
struction given in physics, natural history, and geometry. 8. 
The penmanship should be watched, and the hand exercised to 
write with neatness and ease. 9. Singing, in order to develop 
the voice, to afford a knowledge of the art, and to enable the 
scholars to assist in the solemnities of the church. 10. Gymnas- 
tic exercises accommodated to the age and strength of the scholar. 
— Such is the minimum of education to be afforded by a burgher 
school. If its means enable it to attempt a higher instruction, 
so as to prepare the scholar, destined to a learned profession, for 
an immediate entrance into the gymnasium, the school then takes 
the name of Higher Town School, or Pro gymnasium (hoehere 
Stadtschu le , Progymn asium). 1 

Every pupil, on leaving school, should receive from his masters 
and the committee of superintendence, a certificate of his capacity, 
and of his moral and religious dispositions. These certificates to 
be always produced on approaching the communion, and on en- 
tering into apprenticeship or service. They are given only at 
the period of departure, and in the burgher schools, as in the 
gymnasia, they form the occasion of a great solemnity. 

Every half-year pupils are admitted ; promoted from class to 
class ; and absolved at the conclusion of their studies. 

A special order will determine the number of lessons to be 
given daily and weekly upon each subject, and in every degree. 
No particular books are specified for the different branches in the 
primary schools ; they are left free to adopt the best as they ap- 
pear. For religious instruction in the Protestant schools, the 
Bible and Catechisms. The younger scholars to have the Gos- 
pels and New Testament ; the older the whole Scriptures. Books 
of study to be carefully chosen by the committees, with concur- 
rence of the superior authorities, the ecclesiastical being specially 
consulted in regard to those of a religious nature. For the Cath- 
olic schools, the Bishops, in concert with the provincial consis- 

1 We prefer in this, and some other respects, the order of the Bavarian schools. 
The boy is there prepared for the Gymnasium, which he enters at fourteen, in the 
"Latin School," which he enters at eleven. This is an establishment distinct from 
the burgher school. Of the history of education in Bavaria, we may, perhaps, take? 
an opportunity of speaking. 

Mm 



546 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

tories, to select the devotional books; and in case of any difference 
of opinion, the Minister of Public Instruction shall decide. 

Schoolmasters are to adopt the methods best accommodated to 
the natural development of the human mind ; — methods which 
keep the intellectual powers in constant, general, and spontaneous 
exercise, and are not limited to the infusion of a mechanical 
knowledge. 1 The committees are to watch over the methods of 
the master, and to aid him by their council ; never to tolerate a 
vicious method, and to report to the higher authorities should 
their admonitions be neglected. Parents and guardians have a 
right to scrutinize the system of education by which their child- 
ren are taught ; and to address their complaints to the higher 
authorities, who are bound to have them carefully investigated. 
On the other hand, they are bound to co-operate with their pri- 
vate influence in aid of the public discipline : nor is it permitted 
that they should withdraw a scholar from any branch of educa- 
tion taught in the school as necessary. 

As a national establishment, every school should court the 
greatest publicity. In those for boys, besides the special half- 
yearly examinations, for the promotion from one class to another, 
there shall annually take place public examinations, in order to 
exhibit the spirit of the instruction, and the proficiency of the 
scholars. On this solemnity, the director, or one of the masters, 
in an official programme, is to render an account of the condition 
and progress of the school. In fine, from time to time, there shall 
be published a general report of the state of education in each 
province. In schools for females, the examinations to take place 



1 The Bavarian Lehrplan fucr die Volkschulen is excellent on this point ; and so, in- 
deed, are all the German writers on education. The prevalent ignorance in our own 
country, even of the one fundamental principle of instruction — " that every scholar 
must be his own teacher, or he will learn nothing ;" in other words, that the develop- 
ment is precisely in proportion to the exertion of the faculty— has been signally ex- 
posed, both through example and precept, by our townsman, Mr. Wood ; — a gentle- 
man whose generous and enlightened devotion to the improvement of education 
entitles him to the warmest gratitude of his country. We have the high authority 
of Professor Pillans for stating, that in the parochial schools of Scotland, " the prin-' 
ciple, li That a child, in being taught to read should be taught at the same time to under- 
stand u'hat he reads, is so far from being generally received, that the very opposite, if 
not openly avowed, is at least invariably acted on!" It can not, we trust, be now 
long before the Scottish schoolmaster be sent himself to school. Scotland is, however, 
as far superior to England in her popular education, as inferior to Germany. And, 
considering in what a barbarous manner our schoolmasters are educated, examined, 
appointed, paid, and superintended, they have accomplished far more than could 
reasonably have been expected. 



PRUSSIAN PRIMARY INSTRUCTORS. 547 

in presence of the parents and masters, without any general in- 
vitation. 

But if the public instructors are hound to a faithful perform- 
ance of their duties, they have a right, in return, to the gratitude 
and respect due to the zealous laborer in the sacred work of edu- 
cation. The school is entitled to claim universal countenance 
and aid, even from those who do not confide to it their children. 
All public authorities, each in its sphere, are enjoined to promote 
the public schools, and to lend support to the masters in the ex- 
ercise of their office, as to any other functionaries of the state. 
In all the communes of the monarchy, the clergy of all Christian 
persuasions, whether in the church, in their school visitations, or 
in their sermons on the opening of the classes, shall omit no op- 
portunity of recalling to the schools their high mission, and to 
the people their duties to these establishments. The civil author- 
ities, the clergy, and the masters, shall every where co-operate in 
tightening the bonds of respect and attachment between the peo- 
ple and the school ; so that the nation may be more and more 
habituated to consider education as a primary condition of civil 
existence, and daily to take a deeper interest in its advancement. 

IV.— On the Training- — Appointment — Promotion — Punishment 
of Primary Instructors 

The best plans of education can only be carried into effect by 
good teachers ; and the State has done nothing for the instruction 
of the people, unless it take care that the schoolmasters have 
been well prepared, are encouraged and guided in their duty of 
self-improvement, and finally promoted and recompensed accord- 
ing to their progress, or punished in proportion to their faults. 
To fulfill his duties, a schoolmaster should be pious and wise, 
impressed with the importance of his high and holy calling, well 
acquainted with its duties, and possessing the art of teaphing and 
directing the young, &c. 

Their Training.— Ho provide the schools gradually with such 
masters, their education must not be abandoned to chance ; it is 
necessary to continue establishing, in sufficient numbers, Semi- 
naries for primary instructors (Schullehrer-Seminarien). 1 The 

1 In Austria, where the name, we believe, was first applied, and in France, such 
establishments are termed Normal Schools. This expression, however, is ambiguous ; 
it, indeed, properly denotes the pattern school (Muster schule), to which a seminary far 
schoolmasters is usually, but not necessarily, attached. 



548 C017SJN ON GJBJUfAX SCHOOLS. 

cost of these establishments is to he home in part hy the public 
treasury of the State, in part by the departmental school ex- 
chequers. Every department should possess such a seminary, 
annually turning out a complement of young men, prepared and 
approved competent to their destination (Candidaten), equal in 
number to the average annual loss of schoolmasters in the depart- 
ment. 1 The following regulations are to be attended to in these 
establishments. % 

1. No seminary for primary instructors to admit more than 
from sixty to seventy alumni (Praeparanden). 

2. In departments where Protestants and Catholics are nearly 
equal, and where funds and other circumstances permit, there 
shall be established a seminary of this kind, for each religion. 
But where there is a great preponderance of either, the schools 
of the less numerous persuasion shall be provided with masters 
from a seminary of the same creed, in some neighboring depart- 
ment, or from a small establishment of the kind annexed to a 
simple primary school. Seminaries common to Protestants and 
Catholics are sanctioned, provided the Sieves receive religious in- 
struction in conformity to their belief. 

3. These seminaries are to be established, as far as possible, 
in towns of a middling size : — not in large, to remove the young 
men from the seductions of a great city ; — not in small, to allow 
them to profit by the vicinity of schools of different degrees. 

4. To enable them to recruit their numbers with the most 
likely subjects, and to educate these themselves, they shall, as 
frequently as possible, be in connection with orphan hospitals 
and charity schools, &c. &c. 

5. It is not necessary to have two kinds of seminaries for pri- 
mary instructors, &c. &c. 

6. The studies of the primary seminaries are not the same as 
the studies of the primary schools themselves. Admission into 
the seminary supposes a complete course of primary instruction, 
and the main soope of the institution is to add, to the knowledge 
previously acquired, accurate and comprehensive notions of the 
art of teaching, and of. the education of children, in general and 

1 This in 1819. At present there is not a department of the Prussian monarchy 
without its great primary seminary, and frequently, over and above, several smaller 
subsidiary institutions of the same kind. Of the Great Primary Seminaries, there 
existed in 1806, only fourteen ; in 1826, twenty-eight, i. e. one for each department ; 
in 1831, thirty-four 



PRUSSIAN PRIMARY INSTRUCTORS. 549 

in detail, in theory and in practice. 1 But as it may not always 
be possible to obtain subjects fully prepared, it is permitted to 
receive, as seminarists, those who are not yet perfect in the higher 
departments of their previous studies. The age of admission is 
from sixteen to eighteen. 

7. The principal aim of the primary seminaries is to form their 
pupils to health of body and mind ; to inspire them w T ith religious 
sentiment, and the kindred psedagogical spirit. The instruction 
and exercises in the seminary to be coextensive with the branches 
of education in the primary schools. In regard to methods, it 
should be less attempted to communicate theories, than, by en- 
lightened observation and personal experience, to lead the pupil 
to clear and simple principles ; and to this end, schools should be 
attached to all the seminaries, in which the alumni may be ex- 
ercised to practice. 

8. The course of preparation to last three years. The first 
in supplement of the previous primary education ; the second 
devoted to special instruction of a higher order : and the third 
to practical exercises in the annexed primary school, and other 
establishments of the place. For those who require no supple- 
mentary instruction, a course of two years may suffice. 

9. Small stipends allowed to a certain number of poor and 
promising seminarists. 

10. All who receive such a gratuity, are obliged at the end of 
their course, to accept any vacancy to which they may be nomi- 
nated by the provincial consistories — with the prospect of a more 
lucrative appointment if their conduct merit promotion. 

11. The regulations of every seminary to be ratified by the 
minister of public instruction ; immediate superintendence to be 
exercised by the provincial consistories, and, in respect to the 
religious instruction of the several seminaries, by the clerical 
authorities. 

But the preparation of primary schoolmasters is not exclusive- 

1 We may here state, that the branches of instruction, in the Prussian primary 
seminaries, are in general : — 1 . Religion ; Biblical history, study of the Bible, an 
Introduction to the sacred books, Christian doctrine and morals. — 2. German language 
etymologically considered, grammar, the communication of thought in speech and 
writing. — 3. Mathematics ; mental arithmetic, ciphering, geometry. — 4. History. — 
5. Geography and geology. — 6. Natural history, physics. — 7. Music ; singing, theory 
of music, general bass, execution on the violin and organ. — 8. Drawing. — 9. Pen- 
manship. — 10. Psedagogic and didactic (i. e. art of moral education, and art of intel* 
lectual instruction) theory to be constantly conjoined with practice. — 11. Church 
service. — 12. Elements of horticulture. — 13. Gymnastic exercises. 



550 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

\y limited to such seminaries. Large primary schools, clergy- 
men, and able schoolmasters, may, at the discretion of the pro- 
vincial consistories, he allowed to attempt this ; their pupils, if 
deficient, to he sent to a seminary to complete their qualification. 
The superintendence of these petty establishments may be con- 
fided to the inspectors of the circle. "When joined to a girls' 
school, these minor establishments may educate schoolmistresses. 
Their appointment. — Every man, foreigner or native, of ma- 
ture age, irreproachable in his moral and religious character, 
and approved, by examination, competent to its duties, is eligi- 
ble to the office of public instructor. But this appointment be- 
longs, by preference, to the seminarists, who, after a full course 
of preparation, have been regularly examined, and found duly 
qualified in the theory and practice of all the various branches 
of primary instruction. These (half-yearly and annual) exami- 
nations are conducted by a commission of four competent indi- 
viduals ; two of its members being lay, two clerical. The cleri- 
cal members, for the examination of Protestant instructors, are 
appointed by the ecclesiastical authorities of the province ; those 
for Catholic, by the bishop of the diocese. The lay members are 
nominated by the provincial consistory. These appointments are 
not for life, but renewable every three years. Religion, and the 
other branches, form the subject of two separate examinations. 
For Catholic teachers, the religious examination takes place under 
the presidency of a church dignitary delegated by the bishop ; 
for Protestant, under the presidency of a clergyman. The ex- 
aminations on temporal matters are conducted under the presi- 
dency of a lay counselor of the provincial consistory. Both parts 
of the examination, though distinct, are viewed as constituting 
but a single whole ; all the members of the commission are 
always present, and the result, if favorable, is expressed in the 
same certificate. This certificate, besides the moral character 
of the candidate, states the comparative degree of his qualifica- 
tion — eminently capable, sufficiently capable, just capable ; and 
also specifies his adaptation to the higher or the lower department 
of primary instruction. Those found incompetent, are either 
declared wholly incapable, or are remitted to their studies. The 
others, with indication of the degree of their certificate, are 
placed on the list of candidates of each department, and have a 
claim to be appointed ; but to accelerate this, the names of those 
worthy of choice are published twioe a year in the official papers 



PRIMARY INSTRUCTORS. 551 

of the departments, where the order of their classification is that of 
their certificates. Schoolmistresses, also, are approved competent 
through examinations regulated by the provincial consistories. 

Incentives to Improvement — Promotion. — It is the duty of the 
clergy and of the enlightened men to whom the superintendence 
and inspection of schools are confided, to watch over the progres- 
sive improvement of the masters. In particular, it is incumbent 
on the directors and rectors of gymnasia and town-schools to take 
an active interest in the younger masters, to afford them advice, 
to point out their errors, and to stimulate them to improve them- 
selves by attending the lessons of more experienced teachers, by 
cultivating their society, by forming school conferences or other 
associations of instructors, and by studying the best works on ed- 
ucation. The provincial consistories, in electing able and zealous 
masters of the popular schools, should engage them to organize 
extensive associations among the schoolmasters of town and 
country, in order to foster the spirit of their calling, and to pro- 
mote their improvement by regular meetings, by consultations, 
conversations, practical experiments, written essays, the study of 
particular branches of instruction, reading in commAi well-chosen 
works, and by the discussions to which these give rise. The 
directors of such associations merit encouragement and support, 
in proportion to their application and success. By degrees, every 
circle to have a society of schoolmasters. 1 Distinguished masters, 
and those destined to the direction of primary seminaries, should 
likewise, with the approbation, or on the suggestion of the minis- 
ter, be enabled, at the public expense, to travel in the interior of 
the country or abroad, in order to obtain information touching 
the organization, and wants of the primary schools. 3 Zeal and 

1 .These associations, among other institutions, are at once cause and effect of the 
pedagogical spirit prevalent throughout the empire — a spirit which, unfortunately, has 
no parallel in any other country. How large a share of active intellect is, in Germany, 
occupied with education, may be estimated from the number of works on that science 
which annually appear. Psedagogy forms one of the most extensive departments of 
German literature. Taking the last three years, we find, from Thon's catalogues, that 
in 183(H there were published 501— in 1831, 452— in 1832, 526 new works of this 
class. Of these, twenty were journals, maintained exclusively by their natural circu- 
lation. Does Britain, or France, thus support even one? 

2 This regulation has proved of the highest advantage. But the Prussian govern- 
ment has done much more. Not only have intelligent schoolmasters been sent abroad 
to study the institutions of other countries, as those of Graser, Poehlman, Pestalozzi, 
Fellenberg, &c, but almost every foreign educational method of any celebrity has been 
fully and fairly tried by experiment at home. In this way the Prussian public educa- 
tion has been always up to every improvement of the age, and obviated any tendency 
to a partial and one-sided development. 



d52 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

ability in the master to be rewarded by promotion to situations 
of a higher order, and even in particular cases, by extraordinary 
recompenses. The provincial consistories to prepare tables of the 
different places of schoolmasters, classed according to their emolu- 
ment ; and to take care that the promotion be in general made 
in conformity to these lists. No term of service affords of itself 
a valid claim to promotion ; when a place is solicited superior to 
that for which the petitioner has received a certificate, an exami- 
nation of promotion must take place before the same authorities, 
to whom the examination for appointment is intrusted. Where 
the competency is notorious, examination may, by the ratifying 
power, be dispensed with. The departmental authority must, at 
the end of each year, transmit to the ministry a list of all masters 
newly placed or promoted, with a statement of the value of the 
several appointments ; and this authority is never excusable if it 
leave personal merit without employment and recompense, or the 
smallest service unacknowledged. (The regulations touching the 
degradation and dismissal of incapable, negligent, immoral mas- 
ters, we must wholly omit.) 
* 
V. — Of the Direction of the Schools of Primary Instruction. 

Such is the internal organization of the primary education. 
But this organization would not work of itself; it requires an 
external force and intelligence to impel at once and guide it — in 
other words, a governing power. The fundamental principle of 
this government is, that the ancient union of popular instruction 
with Christianity and the Church should be maintained ; always, 
however, under the supreme direction of the ministerial authority. 

Communal Authorities. — General rule. — That as each com- 
mune, urban or rural, has its primary school or schools, so it 
must have its special Superintending School Committee, ( Schul- 
vor stand.) 

Primary Country Schools. — Where the church contributes to 
their support, this committee is composed of the patron and cler- 
gyman of the parish, of the magistrates of the commune, and of 
several fathers of families, members of the school-union ; and 
where all are not of one faith, the proportion of the sects among 
the members of the union must be represented by the proportion 
of the sects among the fathers of families in the committee. The 
fixed members of the committee form its Committee of Adminis- 
tration (verwaltende Schulvor stand) ; the others are elected (for 



DIRECTION OF PRIMARY SCHOOLS. 553 

four years, and capable of re-election) by the school-union, and 
confirmed by the provincial consistory. No one allowed to decline 
this duty, unless burdened with another communal office. In 
schools exclusively endowed by the church, the committee of 
administration may be wholly ecclesiastical. However consti- 
tuted, this committee takes cognizance of all that concerns the 
school, within and without. The pastor, in particular, who is the 
natural inspector of the village school, ought to be frequent in his 
visits, and unremitted in his superintendence of the masters. The 
committees receive all complaints, which they transmit to the 
superior authorities. Their exertions should be especially directed 
to see that all is conformable to regulation ; to animate, direct, 
and counsel the instructors ; and to excite the zeal of the inhabi- 
tants for education. Articulate directions on the more special 
duties of the administrative committees, and accommodated to 
their several circumstances, to be published by the provincial 
consistories. Services gratuitous. 

Primary Town Schools. — In petti/ towns, where there is only 
a single school, the committees of administration are composed, 
as those of the country ; only, if there be two or more clergymen, 
it is the first who regularly belongs to this committee ; to which 
is also added one of the magistrates, and a representative of the 
citizens. 

In towns of a middling- size, which support several primary 
schools, there is to be formed, in like manner, a single common 
administration ( Orlschulbehoerde), except only, that to this coun- 
cil is added a father of a family of each school, and a clergyman 
of each sect, if the schools be of different creeds. It will form 
matter of consideration whether a person specially skilled in 
scholastic affairs (Schulmann) should be introduced. 

Large towns are to be divided into districts, each having its 
superintending school-committee, ^here shall, however, be a 
central point of superintendence for all the schools, gymnasia 
excepted ; this called the School-commission ( Schulcommission). 
This properly composed of the Lutheran Superintendent, and 
of the Catholic Arch-priest or Dean of the place, and according 
to the size of the town and number of its schools, of one or more 
members of the magistracy, of an equal number of representa- 
tives of the citizens, and of one or two individuals versed in the 
.science of education. A member of each committee of adminis- 
tration (if special circumstances do not prevent) is added, unless 



554 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHuOLS. 

one be already there, hi a different capacity. These bodies to be 
confirmed by the provincial consistories, who must take care that 
only upright, intelligent, and zealous individuals are admitted. 
The members elected for six years, with capacity of re-election ; 
no one, however, obliged to serve longer than three. Municipal 
functions alone afford a plea of excuse. Services unpaid. The 
school-commission is bound — to see that the town be provided 
with the necessary schools — to attend to their wants — to admin- 
ister the general school-fund — to take care that the regulations 
prescribed by the law, the minister, or the provincial consistories, 
are duly executed, in regard to school attendance by the children 
of rich and poor — to do every thing for the internal and external 
prosperity of the schools, &c. &c. &c. The district committees 
have each the superintendence of their schools, in subordination 
to the school-commission. The school-commission and district- 
committees to meet in ordinary once a month. Their presidents 
elected for three years by the members, and confirmed by the 
consistory of the province. Decisions, by plurality of voices ; 
except in matters touching the internal economy of the school, 
which are determined by the opinion of the clergymen, and those 
specially versed in educational matters. The committees may 
call in to assist in their extraordinary general deliberations, the 
clergy and instructors of the district, or a part of them. The 
school-commissions annually address circumstantial reports on 
the schools under their inspection to the provincial consistories ; 
in the petty towns, and country communes, this report is made 
through the inspectors of the circle. 

Authorities of the Circle. — There is a general superintendence 
over the inferior schools of a circle, as likewise over the commit- 
tees of administration of these schools, and this superintendence 
is exercised by the Inspector of the Circle ( Schul-Kreis-Aufseher, 
or Schul-Kreis-Inspektor). The school circle is co-extensive with 
the diocese of the Protestant Superintendent and Catholic Bishop. 
But if the diocese be too large for one school-inspection, it must 
be divided into two circles. For Protestant schools, the superin- 
tendents are in general the inspectors of the circle. The greatest 
care is therefore to be taken that no churchman be nominated 
superintendent, who does not, besides his merely clerical acquire- 
ments, possess those qualifications necessary for the inspection of 
schools. Clergymen, not superintendents, may, in certain spec- 
ified circumstances, be appointed inspectors ; and even laymen, 



DIRECTION OF 'PRIMARY SCHOOLS. 555 

distinguished for their psedagogical knowledge and activity ; 
always, however, with permission previously obtained from the 
Minister of Public Instruction. For the Catholic schools, the 
inspectors are in general the Deans. Under the same conditions 
as for the Protestant schools, other ecclesiastics and even laymen 
permitted to replace the Deans. The Protestant inspectors are 
nominated by the consistory of the province, and confirmed by 
the Minister of Public Instruction. The Catholic inspectors are 
proposed by the bishops, and presented, with an articulate state- 
ment of their qualifications, by the provincial consistories, to the 
Minister for confirmation. The Minister has a right to decline 
the confirmation, when well-founded objections can be alleged 
against the presentee, and to summon the Bishop to make a new 
proposal. The inspector of the circle is charged with watching 
over the internal management of schools, the proceedings of the 
committees, and the conduct of the instructors. The whole scho- 
lastic system, indeed, is subjected to their revision and superior 
direction. They must make themselves fully acquainted with 
the state of all the schools, by means of the half-yearly reports 
transmitted by the communal committees, by attending the ex- 
aminations, by unexpected visits as frequently as may be, and by 
the solemn revisions to be made once a year by every inspector 
in all the schools under his jurisdiction. In these revisions, he 
examines the children assembled together : requires an account 
of the school administration, internal and external, from the ad- 
ministrative committee ; receives the complaints and wishes of 
the members of the school-union, and takes measures to remedy 
defects. He transmits a full report of the revision to the con- 
sistory of the province. The consistory from time to time name 
counselors from its body to assist at the stated, or to make extra- 
ordinary, revisions. 

For the external management of country schools, the inspectors 
should act in concert with the counselors of the circle (Land- 
raethe). All the regulations and inquiries of the provincial con- 
sistories, relative to the internal affairs of the schools, are ad- 
dressed to the inspectors, as on the other hand, the internal wants 
of the schools, and of their masters, are brought by the inspectors 
to the knowledge of the consistories. The Catholic inspectors 
are bound to furnish to the bishop the information required touch- 
ing the religious concerns of the schools ; but their primary duty 
is to inform the provincial consistories of their general condition. 



556 COUSIN ON GERMAN SCHOOLS. 

On the other hand, they should communicate to the bishop tho 
report of the annual revision, addressed to the consistories. The 
Protestant inspectors, as clergymen, are already in connection 
with the synods : but they, as well as the clerical members of 
the committees of administration, ought to inform the synods of 
the state of the schools, and take counsel in the synodal meetings 
in regard to their improvement. Lay inspectors should do this 
by writing. Each inspector receives an annual indemnity for 
the traveling expenses he may incur in the discharge of his du- 
ties, the amount to be rated by the provincial consistories. The 
study of the theory and practice of education is made imperative 
at the University, both on Protestant and Catholic students of 
theology ; and no one shall be allowed to pass the examination 
for holy orders, unless found conversant with all matters requisite 
for the administration and superintendence of schools. The law 
of 1819 stops with the inspector of the circle. But it should be 
remembered, that over the inspector stands the school-counselor 
( Schulrath) ; a functionary belonging to the departmental council 
of regency, and yet nominated by the Minister of Public Instruc- 
tion. The regency represented by the school-counselor, is not to 
be confounded with the consistory of the province, of which the 
school-board (Schulcolleg-ium) forms part. This high scholastic 
authority, provincial, not departmental, intermeddles with prima- 
ry instruction only in certain more important points ; for exam- 
ple, the seminaries for primary schoolmasters, lying, as they do, 
beyond the sphere of the regency, of the school-counselor, and of 
the inspector of the circle. Of these we have already spoken 
(supra, pp. 534-537). 

VI. — Of Private Schools. 

In Prussia all education, but especially the education of the 
people, rests on the public establishments ; the intelligence of the 
nation was too important a concern to be abandoned to chance ; 
but though no dependence is placed by the State on private- 
schools, these institutions are not proscribed, but authorized un- 
der the conditions necessary to obviate all serious detriment to 
the cause of education. We can not enter into any detail on this 
head. Suffice it to say, that while the State on the one hand, 
through the high qualification it secures in those to whom it con- 
fides the care of public instruction, raises the general standard of 
pedagogical competency to a very lofty pitch ; on the other, it 



PRIVATE SCHOOLS— COUSIN'S OBSERVATIONS. 557 

takes measures directly to abate the nuisance, so prevalent 
among ourselves, of unqualified interlopers in this difficult and 
all-important occupation. In Prussia, quacks are tolerated nei- 
ther in medicine nor in education. Private instructors must 
produce satisfactory evidence of their moral and religious charac- 
ter ; their capacity is ascertained by examination ; and the license 
which they obtain, specifies what, and in what degree, they are 
found qualified to teach. Neither are private establishments o f 
education emancipated from public inspection. 



"We must subjoin M. Cousin's observations on this Law, and 
on the expediency of its adoption. They are of high importance ; 
and from their application to the circumstances of our own coun- 
try, are hardly less deserving of consideration in England than in 
France. 

" The points of which I have now treated comprehend the whole mecha- 
nism of primary education in Prussia. There is not a single article but 
is literally borrowed from the law of 1819. This law, without entering 
into specialties relative to the several provinces, neglects no object of in- 
terest. As a legislative measure regarding primary instruction, it is the 
most compi'ehensive and perfect with which I am acquainted. 

" It is, indeed, impossible not to acknowledge its consummate wisdom. 
No inapplicable general principles ; no spirit of system ; no particular and 
exclusive views, govern the legislator ; he avails himself of all the means 
conducive to his end, even when these means differ widely from each 
other. A king, an absolute king, has given this law ; an irresponsible 
minister has counseled or digested it ; yet no mistaken spirit of centraliza- 
tion or ministerial bureaucracy is betrayed ; almost every thing is com- 
mitted, to the authorities of the commune, of the department, of the 
province ; with the minister is left only the impulsion and general super- 
intendence. The clergy have an ample share in the direction of popular 
instruction, and the fathers of families are likewise consulted in the towns 
and in the villages. In a word, all the interests naturally concerned in 
the business, find their place in this organization, and concur each in its 
own manner to the common end — the civilization of the people. 

" This Prussian law appears to me, therefore, »excellent ; but we are 
not to imagine it the result of one man's wisdom. Baron von Altenstein, 
by whom it was digested, is not its author ; and it may be said to have 
already existed in a mass of partial ordinances, and in the usages and 
manners of the country. There is not, perhaps, a single article of this 
long law, of which there are not numerous precedents ; and in a notice 
touching the history of primary education in Prussia, in BeckedorfF's 
Journal, I find enactments of 1728 and 1736, comprising a large propor- 
tion of the regulations enforced by the law. of 1819. The obligation on 
parents to send their children to school is of long standing in Prussia. 
The extensive interference of the Church in the education of the people 
ascends to the origin of Protestantism, to which it indeed belongs ; for it 



558 COUSIN'S OBSERVATIONS. 

is evident that a revolution, accomplished in the name of liberty of 
thought, behoved, for its own defense and establishment, to work out the 
mental emancipation of the people, and the diffusion of education. The 
law of 1819 undoubtedly pitches sufficiently high, what is to be taught 
in the elementary and burgher schools; but if this instruction appear ex- 
cessive for certain localities, it must be stated that it is already practiced, 
and even surpassed, in many others. The boldest measure is the estab- 
lishment of a great seminary for the education of primary schoolmasters 
in each department ; but there were already similar establishments in 
most of the ancient provinces of the monarchy. In fine, this law did 
hardly more than distribute uniformly what existed previously, not only 
in Prussia, but throughout the whole of Germany. It is not, therefore, a 
metaphysical Utopia, arbitrary and artificial, like the greater part of our 
laws concerning primary education, but a measure founded on experience 
and reality. And herein is seen the reason why it could be carried into 
effect, and why it has so rapidly produced the happiest fruits. Previously 
assured that it was every where practicable, the Prussian minister every 
where required its execution, leaving the details to the authorities to 
whom they belonged, and reserving only to himself the primary move- 
ment, the impulsion, and the verification of the whole. This impulsion 
has been so steady, this verification so severe, and the communal, depart- 
mental, and provincial authorities, the School-board in the provincial 
consistories, the School-counselor in each council of department, the In- 
spectors in the circles, the Commissions in the towns, and the Committees 
in the urban and rural communes — all the authorities superintendent of 
the schools, have exerted a zeal at once so unremitted, and so well applied, 
that at present what the law prescribes is almost every where below what 
is actually performed. For example : — The law commands the establish- 
ment in each department of a great primary Seminary; and there is now, 
not only one such in every department, but frequently, likewise, several 
smaller subsidiary seminaries ; — a result which, in a certain sort, guaran- 
tees all others ; for such establishments can only flourish in proportion as 
the masters whom they prepare find comfortable appointments, and the 
comfortable appointment of masters says every thing in regard to the 
prosperity of primary instruction. The schoolmasters have been raised 
to functionaries of the state, and as such have now right to a retiring 
pension in their old age ; and there is formed in every department a fund 
for the widows and orphans of schoolmasters, which the law has recom- 
mended rather than enforced The greatest difficulty was to 

obtain, in the new provinces, and particularly those of the Rhine, the 
execution of that article of the law which, under rigorous penalties, im- 
poses on parents the obligation of sending their children to school. The 
minister wisely suspended that part of the law in these provinces, and 
applied himself to accomplish a similar result by persuasion and emula- 
tion ; then, at last, when he had disseminated the taste for education in 
these provinces, and deemed them sufficiently prepared, he, in 1S25, ren- 
dered the law obligatory, and thenceforward strictly enforced its execu- 
tion [Examples.] The law has been universally applied, 

but with a prudent combination of mildness and rigor. Thus, &c. ... I 
have thought it useful to study the mode in which the Government has 
applied the general law of 1819 to the Grand Duchy of Posen, far behind 
even the provinces of the Rhine. I have under my eyes a number of 



COUSIN'S OBSERVATIONS. 559 

floeuments, which prove the wisdom of the ministerial measures and the 
progress which primary instruction, with the civilization it represents, have 
made in this Polish portion of the monarchy. It would be likewise de- 
sirable that there were published in French, all the ministerial and pro- 
vincial instructions touching the application of the law of 1819 to the 
Jews, and to the dissemination of a taste for education in this portion of 
the Prussian population, numerous and wealthy, but comparatively unen- 
lightened, and apprehensive lest the faith of their children might be 
periled by an attendance on the public schools. 

"In the present state of things, a law regarding primary education is, 
in France, assuredly a measure of indispensable necessity. But how is. a 
good law to be framed in the absence of precedents, and of all experience 
in this important matter ? The education of the people has been hitherto 
so neglected ; the attempts have been so few, and these few so unsuc- 
cessful, that we are totally destitute of those common notions, those fore- 
closed opinions irradicated at once in our habits and judgments, which 
constitute the conditions and bases of a true legislation. I am anxious 
for a law, and a law I also dread ; for I tremble lest we should again 
commence a course of visionary legislation, instead of turning our atten- 
tion to what actually is. God grant that we be made to comprehend, 
that, at present, a law on primary education can only be a provisory, not 
a definitive measure ; that of necessity it must be remodeled some ten 
years hence, and that the problem is only to supply the more urgent 
wants, and bestow a legislative sanction on some incontestable points. 
What are these points? I will attempt to signalize them from actual 
facts. 

" The notion of compelling parents to send their children to school, is not 
perhaps sufficiently prevalent to enable us at present to pass it inconti- 
nently into a laAV ; but all ar - e at one in this — that a school is an establish- 
ment necessary in every commune, and it is readily admitted that this 
school should be maintained at the expense of the commune, allowing the 
commune, if too poor, to have recourse on the department, and the depart- 
ment on the state. This point, then, is not disputed, and ought to be 
ratified into a law. The practice has even preceded the enactment : 
during the last year the municipal councils have been every where voting 
the highest amount of funds within their means for the education of the 
people of their commune. There remains only to convert this almost 
general fact into a legal obligation. 

" You are also aware, sir, that many councils of department have felt 
the necessity of ensuring the supply of schoolmasters, and their better ed- 
ucation, by establishing within their bounds a primary normal school ; 
and we may affirm, that in this expenditure there has been frequently 
more of luxury than of parsimony. This also is a valuable indication; 
and the law would only confirm and generalize what at present takes place 
almost every where, by decreeing a primary normal school for each depart- 
ment, as a primary school for every commune : it being understood that 
this primary normal school should be of greater or less extent, in propor- 
tion to the resources of each department. 

"Here, then, are two very important points on which all are agi'eed : 
Have you not also been struck with the demands of a great many towns, 
large and small, for schools superior to the common primary schools, and 
in which the instruction, without attempting to emulate our royal and 



560 COUSIN'S OBSERVATIONS, 

communal colleges in classical and scientific studies, should devote a more 
particular attention to objects of a more general utility, and indispensable 
to that numerous class of the population which, without entering into the 
learned professions, finds, however, the want of a more extensive and 
varied culture than the lower orders, strictly so called — the peasants and 
artisans ? The towns every where call out for such establishments ; 
several municipal councils have voted considerable funds for this purpose, 
and have addressed themselves to you, in order to obtain the necessary 
authorization, assistance, and advice. Here it is impossible not to observe 
the symptom of a veritable want, the indication of an important chasm in 
our system of public education. You are well aware that I am a zealous 
defender of classical and scientific studies ; not only do I think that it is 
expedient to keep up our collegial plan of studies, more especially the 
philological department of that plan, but I am convinced that it ought to 
be strengthened and extended, and thereby, always maintaining our in- 
contestable superiority in the physical and mathematical sciences, to be 
able to emulate Germany in the solidity of our classical instruction. In 
fact, classical studies are, beyond comparison, the most essential of all, 
conducing, as they do, to the knowledge of our humanity, which they con- 
sider under all its mighty aspects and relations : here, in the language 
of literature of nations who have left behind a memorable trace of their 
passage on the earth ; there, in the pregnant vicissitudes of history which 
continually renovate and improve society ; and finally, in philosophy, 
which reveals to us the simple elements, and the more uniform organi- 
zation of that wondrous being, which history, literature, and languages 
successively clothe in forms the most diversified, and yet always relative to 
some more or less important part of its internal constitution. Classical 
studies maintain the sacred tradition of the intellectual and moral life of 
our humanity. To enfeeble them would, in my eyes, be an act of barbar- 
ism, an attempt against true civilization, and in a certain sort, the crime 
of lese-humanity. May our royal colleges, then, and even a large propor- 
tion of our communal, continue to introduce into the sanctuary the flower 
of our French youth ; they will deserve well of their country. But the 
whole population — can it, ought it, to enter our colleges ? In France, 
primary education is but a scantling; and between this education and 
that of our colleges, there is a blank ; hence it follows that the father of 
a family, even in the lower part of the bourgeoisie, who has the honorable 
desire of bestowing a suitable education on his sons, can only do so by 
sending them to college. Serious inconveniences are the result. In gen- 
eral, these young men, who are not conscious of a lofty destination, prose- 
cute their studies with little assiduity ; and when they return to the pro- 
fession and habits of their family, as nothing in the routine of their ordi- 
nary life occurs to recall and keep up their college studies, a few years are 
sure to obliterate the smattering of classical knowledge they possessed. 
They also frequently contract at college acquaintances and tastes which 
make it almost impossible to accommodate themselves again to the humble 
condition of their parents : hence a race of restless men, discontented with 
their lot, with others, and with themselves, enemies of a social order, in 
which they do not feel themselves in their place, and ready, with some 
acquirements, a talent more or less solid, and an unbridled ambition, to 
throw themselves into all the paths either of servility or revolt. Our col- 
leges should undoubtedly remain open to all, but we ought not to invite 



COUSIN'S OBSERVATIONS. 561 

into them, without discretion, the lower orders ; and this we do, unless 
we establish institutions intermediate between the primary schools and the 
colleges. Germany, and Prussia in particular, are rich in establishments 
of this description. I have already described several in detail, at Frank- 
fort, Weimar, Leipsic ; and they are consecrated by the Prussian law of 
1819. You are aware that I speak of what are called Burgher schools 
(Bucrgerschulen), a word which accurately contradistinguishes them from 
the Learned Schools (Gelehrtenschulen), called in Germany Gymnasia, 
and with us Colleges ; a name in other respects honorable to the bour- 
geoisie, who are not degraded by attending these schools, and to the peo- 
ple, who are thus elevated to the bourgeoisie. The burgher schools con- 
stitute the higher degree of primary instruction, of which the elementary 
schools are the lower. There are thus only two degrees : 1. The Ele- 
mentary School, which is the common basis of all popular education in 
town and country ; 2. The Burgher-school, which, in towns of every 
size where there exists a middle class, affords to all those who are not 
destined for the learned professions, an education sufficiently extensive 
and liberal. The Prussian law, which fixes a maximum for the instruc- 
tion of the elementary school, fixes a minimum for that of the Burgher- 
school ; and there are two very different examinations, in order to obtain 
the license of primary teachers in these several degrees. The Elementary 
School ought to be one ; for it represents, and is destined to foster and 
confirm, the national unity, and, in general, it is not right that the limit 
fixed by law for the instruction in the Elementary School should be over- 
passed ; but the case is different in the Burgher-school ; as this is destined 
for a class essentially different, the middle class ; and it should naturally 
be able to rise in accommodation to the higher circumstances of that class 
in the more important towns. Thus it is that in Prussia the Burgher- 
school has various gradations, from the minimum fixed by law, with 
which I have made you acquainted, up to that higher degree where 
it is connected with the Gymnasium, properly so denominated, and thus 
sometimes obtains the name of Progymnasium. I transmit you an in- 
struction relative to the different progymnasia in the department of Mun- 
ster ; you will there see that these establishments are, as the title indicates, 
preparatory gymnasia, where the classical and scientific instruction stops 
within certain limits, but where the burgher class can obtain a truly 
liberal education. In general, the German burgher schools, somewhat 
inferior to our colleges in classical and scientific studies, are incomparably 
superior to them in what is taught of religion, geography, history, the 
modern languages, music, drawing, and national literature. In my 
opinion, it is of the very highest importance to establish in France, by one 
name or other, burgher schools, under various modifications, and to re- 
model to this form a certain number of our communal colleges. I regard 
this, sir, as an affair of state. Let it not be said that we have already 
various degrees of primary instruction in France, and that what I require 
has been already provided. There is nothing of the kind ; we have three 
degrees, it is true, but ill-defined ; the distinction is therefore naught. 
These three degrees are an arbitrary classification, the principle of which 
I do not pretend to comprehend, while the two degrees determined by the 
Prussian law are manifestly founded on the nature of things. Finally, 
comprehending these two degrees within the circle of primary education, 
it is not unimportant to distinguish and characterize them by different 



562 COUSIN'S OBSERVATIONS. 

names ; but these names — schools of the third, second, and first degree — 
mark nothing hut abstract differences ; they speak not to the imagination 
and make no impression on the intellect. In Prussia, the names, Ele- 
mentary School and Burgher school, as representing the inferior and supe- 
rior degrees of primary instruction, are popular. That of Mittelschtde 
(Middle-school) is also employed in some parts of Germany — a name 
which might, perhaps, be conveniently adopted by us. That, and Ele- 
mentary School, would comprehend the two essential degrees of primary 
instruction; and our primary normal schools would furnish masters equally 
for both degrees ; for whom, however, there behoved to be two kinds of 
examinations, and two kinds of licenses. There would remain for you 
only to fix a minimum for the middle school, as you would undoubtedly 
do for the elementary school, taking care to allow the several departments 
gradually to surpass their minimum, according to their resources and their 
success. 

" This is what appears to me substantially contained in all the petitions 
addressed to you by the towns, whether to change the subjects taught in 
our communal colleges ; whether to add to the classical and scientific in- 
struction afforded in our royal colleges, other courses of more general 
utility ; whether, in fine, to be allowed schools which they know not how 
to name, and which more than once they have denominated Industrial 
Schools, in contradistinction to our colleges. Care must be taken not to 
weaken the classical studies of our colleges ; on the contrary, I repeat it, 
they ought to be strengthened. We should avoid the introduction of two 
descriptions of pupils into our colleges ; this is contrary to all good disci- 
pline, and would unavoidably enervate the more difficult studies to the 
profit of the easier. Neither is it right to give the name of Industrial 
Schools to schools in which the pupils are not supposed to have any par- 
ticular vocation. The people feel only their wants ; it belongs to you, sir, 
to make choice of the means by which these wants are to be satisfied. A 
cry is raised from one extremity of France to the other, demanding for three- 
fourths of the French nation establishments intermediate between the simple 
elementary schools and the colleges. The prayers are urgent; they are 
almost unanimous. Here again is a point of the very highest importance 
on which it would be easy to dilate. The general prayer, numerous at- 
tempts more or less successful, call out for a law, and render it at once in- 
dispensable and easy." 

Our limits compel us to conclude, leaving much interesting 
matter of the Rapport unnoticed, and the whole Projet de Lot. 
"What we have extracted of the former, will afford a sample of 
the exceeding importance of its contents. Of this we have before 
us a German translation by Dr. Kroeger of Hamburgh, who has 
appended some valuable notes ; hut, though the work is of incom- 
parably greater importance for this country, we have little expec- 
tation that it will appear in English. We are even ignorant of 
our wants. In fact, the difficulty of all educational improvement 
in Britain lies less in the amount, however enormous, of work to 
be performed, than in the notion that not a great deal is requisite. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 563 

Our pedagogical ignorance is only equaled by our pedagogical 
conceit : and where few are competent to understand, all believe 
themselves qualified to decide. 

Had our limits permitted, we should have said something of 
the history of primary education in G-ermany ; and a word on the 
system of popular instruction in some of the North American 
democracies, which, however inferior, still approaches nearest to 
that established in the autocratic monarchies of the empire. "We 
should also have attempted to show, though somewhat startling 
in its appliance to ourselves, that Aristotle's criterion of an honest 
and intelligent government holds universally true. A govern- 
ment, says the philosopher, ruling for the benefit of all, is, of its 
very nature, anxious for the education of all, not only because 
intelligence is in itself a good, and the condition of good, but even 
in order that its subjects may be able to appreciate the benefits 
of which it is itself the source ; whereas a government ruling for 
the profit of its administrators, is naturally willing to debase the 
mind and character of the governed, to the end that they may be 
disqualified to understand, to care for, and to assert their rights, 
— But we must leave these inquiries for the present ; trusting to 
be able, ere long, to resume them. 



APPENDICES. 



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568 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) 



Thinking (employing that term as comprehending all our cog- 
nitive energies) is of two kinds. It is either A) Negative or B) 
Positive. 

A.) Thinking is Negative (in propriety, a negation of thought), 
when Existence is not attributed to an object. It is of two kinds ; 
in as much as the one or the other of the conditions of positive 
thinking is violated. In either case, the result is Nothing. 

I.) If the condition of Non-contradiction be not fulfilled, there 
emerges The really Impossible, what has been called in the 
schools, Nihil purum. 

II.) If the condition of Relativity be not purified, there results 
The Impossible to thought ; that is, what may exist, but what 
we are unable to conceive existing. This impossible, the schools 
have .not contemplated ; we are, therefore, compelled, for the sake 
of symmetry and precision, to give it a scholastic appellation in 
the Nihil cogitabile. 

B.) Thinking is Positive (and this in propriety is the only 
real thought), when Existence is predicated of an object. By 
existence is not, however, here meant real or objective existence, 
but only existence subjective or ideal. Thus imagining a Cen- 
taur or a Hippogryph, we do not suppose that the phantasm has 
any being beyond our imagination; but still we attribute to it 
an actual existence in thought. Nay, we attribute to it a possi- 
ble existence in creation ; for we can represent nothing, which 
we do not think, as within the limits of Almighty power to real- 
ize. — Positive thinking can be brought to bear only under two 
conditions ; the condition of I.) Non-contradiction, and the condi- 
tion of II.) Relativity. If both are fulfilled, we think Something. 

I.) Non-contradiction. This condition is insuperable. We 
think it, not only as a law of thought, but as a law of things ; 
and while we suppose its violation to determine an absolute im- 
possibility, we suppose its fulfillment to afford only the Not-impos- 
sible. Thought is, under this condition, merely explicative or 
analytic ; and the condition itself is brought to bear under three 
phases, constituting three laws : i.) — the law of Identity ; ii.) — 
the law of Contradiction ; iii.) — the law of Excluded Middle. 
The science of these laws is Logic ; and as the laws are only ex- 
plicative, Logic is only formal. (The principle of Sufficient Rea- 
son should be excluded from Logic. For, in as much as this 
principle is not material (material=non-formal) it is only a deri- 



CONDITIONS OF THE THINKABLE. 569 

vation of the three formal laws ; and in as much as it is material, 
it coincides with the principle of Causality, and is extra-logical). 

Though necessary to state the condition of Non-contradiction, 
there is no dispute about its effect, no danger of its violation. 
When I, therefore, speak of the Conditioned, I use the term 
in special reference to Relativity. By existence conditioned, is 
meant, emphatically, existence relative, existence thought under 
relation. Relation may thus be understood to contain all the 
categories and forms of positive thought. 

II.) Relativity. This condition (by which, be it observed, is 
meant the relatively or conditionally relative, and, therefore, not 
even the relative, absolutely or infinitely) — this condition is not 
insuperable. We should not think it as a law of things, but 
merely as a law of thought ; for we find that there are contradictory 
opposites, one of which, by the rule of Excluded Middle, must 
be true, but neither of which can by us be positively thought, as 
possible. — Thinking, under this condition, is ampliative or syn- 
thetic. Its science Metaphysic (using that term in a comprehen- 
sive meaning), is therefore material, in the sense of non-formal. 
The condition of Relativity, in so far as it is necessary, is brought 
to bear under three principal relations ; the first of which springs 
from the subject of knowledge — the mind thinking (the relation of 
Knowledge) ; the second and third from the object of knowledge 
— the thing thought about (the relations of Existence.) 

(Besides these necessary and original relations, of which alone 
it is requisite to speak in an alphabet of human thought, there 
are many relations, contingent and derivative, which we fre- 
quently employ in the actual applications of our cognitive ener- 
gies. Such for example (without arrangement) as — True and 
False, Good and Bad, Perfect and Imperfect, Easy and Difficult, 
Desire and Aversion, Simple and Complex, Uniform and Various, 
Singular and Universal, Whole and Part, Similar and Dissimilar, 
Congruent and Incongruent, Equal and Unequal, Orderly and 
Disorderly, Beautiful and Deformed, Material and Immaterial, 
Natural and Artificial, Organized and Inorganized, Young and 
Old, Male and Female, Parent and Child, &c. &c. These admit 
of classification from different points of view ; but to attempt 
their arrangement at all, far less on any exclusive principle, would 
here be manifestly out of place). 

i.) The relations of Knowledge are those which arise from the 
reciprocal dependence of the subject and of the object of thought, 



570 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) 

Self and Not-self (Ego and Non-ego — Subjective and Object- 
ive.) Whatever comes into consciousness, is thought by us, either 
as belonging to the mental self, exclusively (subjectivo-subjective), 
or as belonging to the not-self, exclusively (objectivo-objective), 
or as belonging partly to both (subjectivo-objective.) It is diffi- 
cult, however, to find words to express precisely all the complex 
correlations of knowledge. For in cognizing a mere affection of 
self, we objectify it; it forms a subject-object or subjective object 
or subjectivo-subjective object : and how shall we name and dis 
criminate a mode of mind, representative of and relative to a mode 
of matter? This difficulty is, however, strictly psychological. In 
so far as we are at present concerned, it is manifest that all these 
cognitions exist for us, only as terms of a correlation. 

The relations of Existence, arising from the object of knowledge, 
are twofold; in as much as the relation is either Intrinsic or 
Extrinsic. 

ii.) As the relation of Existence is Intrinsic, it is that of Sub- 
stance and Quality (form, accident, property, mode, affection, 
phenomenon, appearance, attribute, predicate, &c.) It may be 
called qualitative. 

Substance and Quality are, manifestly, only thought as mu- 
tual relatives. We can not think a quality existing absolutely, 
in or of itself. We are constrained to think it, as inhering in 
some basis, substratum, hypostasis, or substance ; but this sub- 
stance can not be conceived by us, except negatively, that is, as 
the unapparent — the inconceivable correlative of certain appear- 
ing qualities. If we attempt to think it positively, we can think 
it only by transforming it into a quality or bundle of qualities, 
which, again, we are compelled to refer to an unknown substance, 
now supposed for their incogitable basis. Every thing, in fact, 
may be conceived as the quality, or as the substance of some- 
thing else. But absolute substance and absolute quality, these 
are both inconceivable, as more than negations of the conceivable. 
It is hardly requisite to observe, that the term Substance is vul- 
garly applied, in the abusive signification, to a congeries of quali- 
ties, denoting those especially which are more permanent, in con- 
trast to those which are more transitory. (See the treatise De 
Mundo, attributed to Aristotle, c. iv.) 

What has now been said, applies equally to Mind and Matter. 

As the relation of Existence is Extrinsic, it is threefold ; and 



CONDITIONS OF THE THINKABLE. 571 

as constituted by three species of quantity, it may be called quan- 
titative. It is realized in or by : 1°. Protensive quantity, Pro- 
tension, or Time ; 2°. Extensive quantity, Extension or Space ; 
3°. Intensive quantity, Intension or Degree. These quantities 
may be all considered, either as Continuous or as Discrete ; and 
they constitute the three last great relations which we have here 
to signalize. 

iii.) Time, Protension or protensive quantity, called likewise 
Duration, is a necessary condition of thought. It may be con- 
sidered both in itself and in the things which it contains. 

Considered in itself. — Time is positively inconceivable, if we 
attempt to construe it in thought ; — either, on the one hand, as 
absolutely commencing or absolutely terminating, or on the other, 
as infinite or eternal, whether ab ante or a post ; and it is no less 
inconceivable, if we attempt to fix an absolute minimum or to 
follow out an infinite division. It is positively conceivable ; if 
conceived as an indefinite past, present or future ; and as an in- 
determinate mean between the two unthinkable extremes of an 
absolute least and an infinite divisibility. For thus it is relative. 

In regard to Time Past and Time Future there is comparative- 
ly no difficulty, because these are positively thought as protensive 
quantities. But Time Present, when we attempt to realize it, 
seems to escape us altogether — to vanish into nonentity. The 
present can not be conceived as of any length, of any quantity, of 
any protension, in short, as any thing positive. It is only con- 
ceivable as a negation, as the point or line (and these are only 
negations) in which the past ends and the future begins — in 
which they limit each other. 

" Le moment ou je parle, est deja loin de moi." 

In fact, we are unable to conceive how we do exist ; and specula- 
tively, we must admit, in its most literal acceptation — " Victuri 
semper, vivimus nunquam." The Eleatic Zeno's demonstration 
of the impossibility of Motion, is not more insoluble than could 
be framed a proof, that the Present has no reality ; for however 
certain we may be of both, we can positively think neither. So 
true is it as said by St. Augustin : " "What is Time — if not asked, 
I know ; but attempting to explain, I know not." 

Things in Time are either co-inclusive or co-exclusive. Things 
co-inclusive — if of the same time are, pro tanto, identical, appar- 
ently and in thought ; if of different times (as causes and effect, 



572 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) 

causcc et causatum), they appear as different, but are thought as 
identical. Things co-exclusive are mutually, either prior and 
posterior, or contemporaneous. 

The impossibility we experience of thinking negatively or as 
non-existent, non-existent, consequently in time (either past or 
future) aught, which we have conceived positively or as existent 
— this impossibility affords the principle of Causality, &c. (Spe- 
cially developed in the sequel.) 

Time applies to both Substance and Quality ; and includes the 
other quantities, Space and Degree. 

iv.) Space, Extension or extensive quantity is, in like manner, 
a necessary condition of thought ; and may also be considered, 
both in itself, and in the things which it contains. 

Considered in itself. — Space is positively inconceivable : — as a 
whole, either infinitely unbounded, or absolutely bounded ; as a 
part, either infinitely divisible, or absolutely indivisible. Space 
is positively conceivable : — as a mean between these extremes ; in 
other words, we can think it either as an indefinite whole, or as 
an indefinite part. For thus it is relative. 

The things contained in Space may be considered, either in 
relation to this form, or in relation to each other. — In relation to 
Space : the extension occupied by a thing is called its place ; and 
a thing changing its place, gives the relation of motion in space, 
space itself being always conceived as immovable, 

" stabilisque manens dat cuncta moveri." 

— Considered in relation to each other. Things, spacially, are 
either inclusive, thus originating the relation of containing and 
contained ; or co-exclusive, thus determining the relation of posi- 
tion or situation — of here and there. 

Space applies, proximately, to things considered as Substance ; 
for the qualities of substances, though they are in, may not occu- 
py, space. In fact, it is by a merely modern abuse of the term, 
that the affections of Extension have been styled Qualities. It 
is extremely difficult for the human mind to admit the possibil- 
ity of unextended substance. Extension, being a condition of 
positive thinking, clings to all our conceptions ; and it is one 
merit of the philosophy of the Conditioned, that it proves space 
to be only a law of thought, and not a law of things. The diffi- 
culty of thinking, or rather of admitting as possible, the immate- 
riality of the soul, is shown by the tardy and timorous manner in 



CONDITIONS OF THE THINKABLE. 573 

which the inextension of the thinking subject was recognized in 
the Christian Church. Some of the early Councils and most of 
the Fathers maintained the extended, while denying the corporeal, 
nature of the spiritual principle ; snd, though I can not allow, 
that Descartes was the first by whom the immateriality of mind 
was fully acknowledged, there can be no doubt, that an assertion 
of the inextension and illocality of the soul, was long and very 
generally eschewed, as tantamount to the assertion, that it was a 
mere nothing. 

On space are dependent what are called the Primary Qualities 
of body, strictly so denominated, and Space combined with Degree 
affords, of body, the Secundo-primary Qualities. (On this dis- 
tinction, see Dissertations on Reid, p. 845-853.) 

Our inability to conceive an absolute elimination from space of 
aught, which we have conceived to occupy space, gives the law of 
what I have called Ultimate Incompressibility, &c. (lb. p. 847.) 

v.) Degree, Intension or intensive quantity is not, like Time 
and Space, an absolute condition of thought. Existences are not 
necessarily thought under it ; it does not apply to Substance, but 
to Quality, and that in the more limited acceptation of the word. 
For it does not apply to what have (abusively) been called by 
modern philosophers the Primary Qualities of body ; these being 
merely evolutions of Extension, which, again, is not thought 
under Degree. (Dissertations on Reid, p. 846, sq.) Degree may, 
therefore, be thought as null, or as existing only potentially. But 
thinking it to be, we must think it as a quantity ; and, as a 
quantity, it is positively both inconceivable and conceivable. — It 
is positively inconceivable : absolutely, either as least or as great- 
est ; infinitely, as without limit, either in increase or in diminu- 
tion. — On the contrary, it is positively conceivable; as indefinite- 
ly high or higher, as indefinitely low or lower. — The things thought 
under it ; if of the same intension are correlatively uniform, if of 
a different degree, are correlatively higher or lower. 

Degree affords the relations of Actuality and Potentiality — of 
Action and Passian — of Power active, and Power passive, &c. 

Degree is, likewise, developed into what, in propriety, are 
called the Secondary Qualities of body ; and combined with 
Space, into the Secundo-primary. (lb. p. 853, p. 848, sq.) 

So much for the Conditions of Thinking, in detail. 

If the general doctrine of the Conditioned be correct, it yields 



574 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A). 

as a corollary, that Judgment, that Comparison is implied in 
every act of apprehension ; and the fact, that consciousness can 
not he realized without an energy of judgment, is, again, a proof 
of the correctness of the theory, asserting the Relativity of 
Thought. 

The philosophy of the Conditioned even from the preceding 
outline, is, it will he seen, the express converse of the philosophy 
of the Absolute — at least, as this system has been latterly evolved 
in Germany . For this asserts to man a knowledge of the Uncon- 
ditioned — of the Absolute and Infinite ; while that denies to him 
a knowledge of either, and maintains, all which we immediately 
know, or can know, to be only the Conditioned, the Relative, the 
Phenomenal, the Finite. The one supposing knowledge to be 
only of existence in itself, and existence in itself to be appre- 
hended, and even understood, proclaims — " Understand that you 
may believe." ("Intellige ut credas"); the other, supposing that 
existence, in itself, is unknown, that apprehension is only of 
phenomena, and that these are received only upon trust, as in- 
comprehensibly revealed facts, proclaims with the Prophet — " Be- 
lieve that ye may understand," (" Crede ut intelligas." Is. vii. 
9, sec. lxx.) — But extremes meet. In one respect, both coincide; 
for both agree, that the knowledge of Nothing is the principle or 
result of all true philosophy : 

" Scire Nihil — studiurn, quo nos Isetamur utrique." 

But the one doctrine, openly maintaining that the Nothing 
must yield every thing, is a philosophic omniscience ; whereas 
the other, holding that Nothing can yield nothing, is a philoso- 
phic nescience. In other words : — the doctrine of the Uncondi- 
tioned is a philosophy confessing relative ignorance, but professing 
absolute knowledge ; while the doctrine of the Conditioned is a 
philosophy professing relative knowledge, but confessing absolute 
ignorance. Thus, touching the Absolute : the watchword of the 
one is — "Noscendo cognoscitur, ignorando ignoratur;" the watch- 
word of the other is — " Noscendo ignoratur, ignorando cognosci- 
tur." 

But which is true ? — To answer this, we need only to examine 
our own consciousness; there shall we recognize the limited "ex- 
tent of our tether." 

" Tecum habita, et noris quam sit tibi curta supellex." 



CAUSALITY. 575 

But this oB.e requisite is fulfilled (alas !) by few ; and the same 
philosophic poet has to lament : 

" Ut nemo in sese tentat descendere — nemo ; 
Sed prsecedenti spectatur mantica tergo !" 

To manifest the utility of introducing the principle of the Con- 
ditioned into our metaphysical speculations, I shall (always in 
outline) give one only, but a signal illustration of its importance. 
- — Of all questions in the history of philosophy, that concerning 
the origin of our judgment of Cause and Effect is, perhaps, the 
most celebrated ; but, strange to say, there is not, so far as I am 
aware, to be found a comprehensive view of the various theories, 
proposed in explanation, not to say, among these, any satisfactory 
explanation of the phenomenon itself. 

The phenomenon is this : — When aware of a new appearance, 
we are unable to conceive that therein has originated any new 
existence, and are, therefore, constrained to think, that what now 
appears to us under a new form, had previously an existence 
under others. These others (for they are always plural) are 
called its cause ; and a cause (or more properly causes) we can 
not but suppose ; for a cause is simply every thing without which 
the effect would not result, and all such concurring, the effect 
can not but result. "We are utterly unable to construe it in 
thought as possible, that the complement of existence has been 
either increased or diminished. We can not conceive, either, on 
the one hand, nothing becoming something, or, on the other, some- 
thing becoming nothing. When G-od is said to create the uni- 
verse out of nothing, we think this, by supposing, that he evolves 
the universe out of himself; and, in like manner, we conceive 
annihilation, only by conceiving the creator to withdraw his crea- 
tion from actuality into power. 

" Nil posse creari 
De Nihilo, neque quod genitu 'st ad Nil revocari ;" 

" Gigni 

De Nihilo Nihil, in Nihilum Nil posse reverti :" — 

-—these lines of Lucretius and Persius enounce a physical axiom 
of antiquity ; which, when interpreted by the doctrine of the 
Conditioned, is itself at once recalled to harmony with revealec 
truth, and expressing, in its purest form, the conditions of human 
thought, expresses also, implicitly, the whole intellectual phe- 
nomenon of causality. 

The mind is thus compelled to recognize an absolute identity 



576 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A) 

of existence in the effect and in the complement of its causes — 
between the causatum and the causa. We think the causes to 
contain all that is contained in the effect ; the effect to contain 
nothing but what is contained in the causes. Each is the sum of 
the other. "Omnia mutantur, nihil intent" is what we think, 
what we must think ; nor can the change itself be thought with- 
out a cause. Our judgment of causality simply is : — We neces- 
sarily deny in thought, that the object which we apprehend as 
beginning to be, really so begins ; but, on the contrary, affirm, as 
we must, the identity of its present sum of being, with the sum 
of its past existence. — And here, it is not requisite for us to know, 
under what form, under what combination this quantum previ- 
ously existed ; in other words, it is unnecessary for us to recog- 
nize the particular causes of this particular effect. A discovery 
of the determinate antecedents into which a determinate conse- 
quent may be refunded, is merely contingent — merely the result 
of experience ; but the judgment, that every event should have 
its causes, is necessary, and imposed on us, as a condition of our 
human intelligence itself. This necessity of so thinking, is the 
only phenomenon to be explained. 

Now, throwing out of account the philosophers who, like Dr. 
Thomas Brown, 1 quietly eviscerate the problem of its sole diffi- 
culty, and enumerating only the theories which do not accom- 
modate the phenomenon to be explained to their attempts at 
explanation — these are, in all, seven. 

1°, — And, in the first place, they fall into two supreme classes. 
The one (A) comprehends those theories which consider the causal 
judgment as adventitious, empirical, or a posteriori, that is, as 
derived from experience ; the other (B) comprehends those which 
view it as native, pure, or a priori, that is, as a condition of in- 
telligence itself. — The two primary genera are, however, severally 
subdivided into various species. 

2°, — The former class (A) falls into two subordinates ; in as 
much as the judgment is viewed as founded either on an original 
(a) or on a derivative (b) cognition. 

3°, — Each of these is finally distributed into two ; according 
as the judgment is supposed to have an objective or a subjective 
origin. In the former case (a) it is objective, perhaps objectivo- 

1 The fundamental vice of Dr. Brown's theory has been, with great acuteness, ex 
posed by his successor. Professor Wilson. (See Blackwood's Magazine, July 1836 
vol. xl. p. 122, sq.) 



CAUSALITY. 577 

objective (1) when held to consist in an immediate apprehension 
of the efficiency of causes in the external and internal worlds ; 
and subjective, or rather subjectivo-objective, (2) when viewed as 
given through a self-consciousness alone of the efficiency of our 
own volitions. — In the latter case (b) it is regarded, if objective 
(3), as a product of induction and generalization; if subjective 
(4), as a result of association and custom. 

4°, — In like manner, the latter supreme class (B) is divided 
into two, according as the opinions under it, view in the causal 
judgment, a law of thought : — either ultimate, primary (c) ; or 
secondary, derived (d). 

5°, — It is a corollary of the former doctrine (c) (which is not 
subdivided), that the judgment is a positive act, an affirmative 
deliverance of intelligence (5).- — The latter doctrine (d), on the 
other hand, considers the judgment as of a negative character ; 
and is subdivided into two. For some maintain that the principle 
of causality may be resolved into the principle of Contradiction, 
or, more properly, non-contradiction (6) ; while, though not pre- 
viously attempted, it may be argued that the judgment of caus- 
ality is a derivation from the Condition of Relativity in Time (7). 

First and Second theories. — Of these seven opinions, the first 
has always been held in combination with the second ; whereas, 
the second has been frequently held by those who abandon the 
first. Considering them together, that jj& as the opinion, that we 
immediately apprehend the efficiency of causes external or inter- 
nal ; — this is obnoxious to two fatal objections. 

The first is — that we have no such apprehension, no such ex- 
perience. It is now, indeed, universally admitted, that we have 
no perception of the causal nexus in the material world. Hume 
it was, who decided the opinion of philosophers upon this point. 
But though he advances his refutation of the vulgar doctrine as 
original, he was in fact, herein only the last of a long series of 
metaphysicians, some of whom had even maintained their thesis 
not less lucidly than the Scottish skeptic. I can not indeed be- 
lieve, that Hume could have been ignorant of the anticipation. — 
But while surrendering the first, there are many philosophers 
who still adhere to the second opinion ; — a theory which has been 
best stated and most strenuously supported by the late M. Maine 
de Biran, one of the acutest metaphysicians of France. I will 
to move my arm, and I move it. When we analyze this phe- 
nomenon, says De Biran, the following are the results : — 1°, the 

Oo 



578 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) 

consciousness of an act of will ; 2°, the consciousness of a motion 
produced ; 3°, the consciousness of a relation of the motion to 
the volition. And what is this relation ? Not one of simple 
succession. The will is not for us an act without efficiency ; it 
is a productive energy ; so that, in a volition, there is given to 
us the notion of cause ; and this notion we subsequently project 
out from our internal activities into the changes of the external 
world. — But the empirical fact, here asserted, is incorrect. For 
between the overt fact of corporeal movement, which we perceive, 
and the internal act of the will to move, of which we are self- 
conscious, there intervenes a series of intermediate agencies, of 
which we are wholly unaware ; consequently, we can have no 
consciousness, as this hypothesis maintains, of any causal con- 
nection between the extreme links of this chain, that is, between 
the volition to move and the arm moving. (See Dissertations on 
Reid, p. 866.) 

But independently of this, the second objection is fatal to the 
theory which would found the judgment of causality on any 
empirical apprehension whether of the phenomena of mind or 
of the phenomena of matter. Admitting the causal efficiency to 
be cognizable, and perception with self-consciousness to be com- 
petent for its apprehension, still as these faculties can inform us 
only of individual causations, the quality of necessity and conse- 
quent universality by which this judgment is characterized re- 
mains wholly unexplained. (See Cousin on Locke.) So much 
for the two theories at the head of our enumeration. 

As the first and second opinions have been usually associated, 
so also have been the third and fourth. 

Third theory. — In regard to the third opinion, it is manifest, 
that the observation of certain phenomena succeeding certain 
other phenomena, and the generalization, consequent thereon, 
that these are reciprocally causes and effect — it is manifest that 
this could never of itself have engendered, not only the strong, 
but the irresistible, conviction, that every event must have its 
causes. Each of these observations is contingent, and any num- 
ber of observed contingencies will never impose upon us the con- 
sciousness of necessity, that is the consciousness of an inability 
to think the opposite. This theory is thus logically absurd. For 
it would infer as a conclusion, the universal necessity of the 
causal judgment, from a certain number of actual consecutions ; 
that is, it would collect that all must be, because some are. Log- 






CAUSALITY 579 

ically absurd, it is also psychologically false. For we find no 
difficulty in conceiving the converse of one or of all observed 
consecutions ; and yet, the causal judgment which, ex-hypothesi, 
is only the result of these observations, we can not possibly think, 
as possibly unreal. We have always seen a stone returning to 
the ground when thrown into the air ; but we find no difficulty 
in representing to ourselves some or all stones rising from the 
earth ; nay, we can easily suppose even gravitation itself to be 
reversed. Only, we are unable to conceive the possibility of 
this or of any other event — without a cause. 

Fourth opinion. — Nor does the fourth theory afford a better 
solution. The necessity of so thinking, can not be derived from a 
custom of so thinking. The force of custom, influential as it may 
be, is still always limited to the customary ; and the customary 
never reaches, never even approaches, to the necessary. Associa- 
tion may explain a strong and special, but it can never explain a 
universal and absolutely irresistible belief. — On this theory, also, 
when association is recent, the causal judgment should be weak, 
and rise only gradually into full force, as custom becomes invet- 
erate. But we do not find that this judgment is feebler in the 
young, stronger in the old. In neither case, is there less and 
more ; in both cases the necessity is complete. — Mr. Hume patron- 
ized the opinion, that the causal judgment is an offspring of 
experience engendered upon custom. But those have a sorry in- 
sight into the philosophy of that great thinker who suppose, like 
Brown, that this was a dogmatic theory of his own, or one con- 
sidered satisfactory by himself. On the contrary, in his hands it 
was a reduction of the prevalent dogmatism to palpable absurdity, 
by showing out the inconsistency of its results. To the Lockian 
sensualism, Hume proposed the problem — to account for the 
phenomenon of necessity in our thought of the causal nexus. 
That philosophy afforded no other principle than the custom of 
experience, through which even the attempt at a solution could 
be made ; and the principle of custom Hume shows could never 
account for the product of any real necessity. The alternative 
was plain. Either the doctrine of sensualism is false ; or our 
nature is a delusion. Shallow thinkers admitted the latter alter- 
native, and were lost ; profound thinkers, on the contrary, were 
determined to build philosophy on a deeper foundation than that 
of the superficial edifice of Locke : and thus it is, that Hume has, 
immediately or mediately, been the cause or the occasion of what- 



580 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A). 

ever is of principal value in the subsequent speculations of Scot- 
land, Germany, and France. 

Fifth theory. — In regard to the second supreme genus (B), the 
first of the three opinions which it contains (the fifth in general), 
maintains that the causal judgment is a primary datum, a posi- 
tive revelation of intelligence. To this are to be referred the 
relative theories of Leibnitz, Reid, Kant, Stewart, Cousin, and 
the majority of recent philosophers. To this class Brown like- 
wise belongs ; inasmuch as he idly refers what remains in his 
hands of the evacuated phenomenon to an original belief. 

Without descending to details, it is manifest in general, that 
against the assumption of a special principle, which this doctrine 
makes, there exists a primary presumption of philosophy. This 
is trie law of parsimony ; which prohibits, without a proven ne- 
cessity, the multiplication of entities, powers, principles or causes ; 
above all, the postulation of an unknown force where a known 
impotence can account for the phenomenon. We are, therefore, 
entitled to apply " Occam's razor" to this theory of causality, 
unless it be proved impossible to explain the causal judgment at 
a cheaper rate, by deriving it from a common, and that a nega- 
tive, principle. On a doctrine like the present, is thrown the 
burthen of vindicating its necessity, by showing that unless a 
special and positive principle be assumed, there exists no compe- 
tent mode to save the phenomenon. The opinion can therefore 
only be admitted provisorily ; and it falls, of course, if what it 
would explain can be explained on less onerous conditions. 

Leaving, therefore, this theory, which certainly does account 
for the phenomenon, to fall or stand, according as either of the 
two remaining opinions be, or be not, found sufficient, I go on to 
this consideration. 

Sixth opinion. — Of these, the former, that is the sixth theory, 
has been long exploded. It attempts to establish the causal judg- 
ment upon the principle of Contradiction. Leibnitz was too acute 
a metaphysician to attempt the resolution of the principle of Suf- 
ficient Reason or Causality, which is ampliative or synthetic, into 
the principle of Contradiction, which is merely explicative or 
analytic. But his followers were not so wise. Wolf, Baum- 
garten, and many other Leibnitians, paraded demonstrations of 
the law of Sufficient Reason on the ground of the law of Con- 
tradiction; but the reasoning always proceeds on a covert as- 
sumption of the very point in question. The same argument is, 



CAUSALITY. 581 

however, at an earlier date, to be found in Locke, while modifica- 
tions of it are also given by Hobbes and Samuel Clarke. Hume, 
who was only aware of the demonstration, as proposed by the 
English metaphysicians, honors it with a refutation which has 
obtained even the full approval of Reid ; while by foreign philos- 
ophers, the inconsequence of the reduction, at the hands of the 
Wolfian metaphysicians, has frequently been exposed. I may 
therefore pass it in silence. 

Seventh opinion. — The field is thus open for the last theory, 
which would analyze the judgment of causality into a form of the 
mental law of the Conditioned. This theory, which has not 
hitherto been proposed, comes recommended by its cheapness and 
simplicity. It postulates no new, no express, no positive princi- 
ple. It merely supposes that the mind is limited ; the law of 
limitation — the law of the Conditioned constituting, in one of its 
applications, the law of Causality. The mind is astricted to think 
in certain forms; and, under these, thought is possible only in 
the conditioned interval between two unconditioned contradictory 
extremes or poles, each of which is altogether inconceivable, but 
of which, on the principle of Excluded Middle, the one or the 
other is necessarily true. In reference to the present question, 
it need only be recapitulated, that we must think under the con- 
dition of Existence — Existence Relative — and Existence Rela- 
tive in Time. But what does existence relative in time imply ? 
It implies, 1°, that we are unable to realize in thought : on the 
one pole of the irrelative, either an absolute commencement, or 
an absolute termination of time ; as on the other, either an infi- 
nite non-commencement, or an infinite non-termination of time- 
It implies, 2°, That we can think, neither, on the one pole, an 
absolute minimum, nor, on the other, an infinite divisibility of 
time. Yet these constitute two pairs of contradictory proposi- 
tions ; which, if our intelligence be not all a lie, can not both be 
true, while, at the same time, either the one or the other neces- 
sarily must. But, as not relatives, they are not cogitables. 

Now the phenomenon of causality seems nothing more than a 
corollary of the law of the conditioned, in its application to a 
thing thought under the form or mental category of existence 
relative in time. "We can not know, we can not think a thing, 
except under the attribute of existence; we can not know or think 
a thing to exist, except as in time ; and we can not know or think 
a thing to exist in time, and think it absolutely to commence. 



582 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) 

Now this at once imposes on us the judgment of causality. And 
thus : — An ohject is given us, either by our presentative, or by 
our representative, faculty. As given, we can not but think it 
existent, and existent in time. But to say, that we can not but 
think it to exist, is to say, that we are unable to think it non- 
existent — to think it away — to annihilate it in thought. And 
this we can not do. "We may turn away from it ; we may en- 
gross our attention with other objects ; we may, consequently, 
exclude it from our thought. That we need not think a thing is 
certain; but thinking it, it is equally certain that we can not 
think it not to exist. So much will be at once admitted of the 
present ; but it may probably be denied of the past and future. 
Yet if we make the experiment, we shall find the mental annihi- 
lation of an object, equally impossible under time past, and pres- 
ent, and future. To obviate, however, misapprehension, a very 
simple observation may be proper. In saying that it is impossi- 
ble to annihilate an object in thought, in other words, to conceive 
as non-existent, what had been conceived as existent — it is of 
course not meant, that it is impossible to imagine the object 
wholly changed in form. "We can represent to ourselves the ele- 
ments of which it is composed, divided, dissipated, modified in 
any way ; we can imagine any thing of it, short of annihilation. 
But the complement, the quantum, of existence, thought as con- 
stituent of an object — that we can not represent to ourselves, 
either as increased, without abstraction from other entities, or as 
diminished, without annexation to them. In short, we are una- 
ble to construe it in thought, that there can be an atom absolute- 
ly added to, or absolutely' taken away from, existence in general. 
Let us make the experiment. Let us form to ourselves a concept 
of the universe. Now, we are unable to think, that the quantity 
of existence, of which the universe is the conceived sum, can 
either be amplified or diminished. We are able to conceive, in- 
deed, the creation of a world ; this indeed as easily as the crea- 
tion of an atom. But what is our thought of creation ? It is 
not a thought of the mere springing of nothing into something. 
On the contrary, creation is conceived, and is by us conceivable, 
only as the evolution of existence from possibility into actuality, 
by the fiat of the deity. Let us place ourselves in imagination 
at its very crisis. Now, can we construe it to thought, that the 
moment after the universe flashed into material reality, into 
manifested being, that there was a larger complement of exist- 



CAUSALITY. 583 

ence in the universe and its author together, than, the moment 
before, there subsisted in the deity alone ? This we are unable 
to imagine. And what is true of our concept of creation, holds 
of our concept of annihilation. "We can think no real annihilation 
— no absolute sinking of something into nothing. But, as crea- 
tion is cogitable by us, only as a putting forth of divine power, 
so is annihilation by us only conceivable, as a withdrawal of that 
same power. All that is now acUially existent in the universe, 
this we think and must think, as having, prior to creation, vir- 
tually existed in the creator ; and in imagining the universe to 
be annihilated, we can only conceive this, as the retractation by 
the deity of an overt energy into latent power. — In short, it is 
impossible for the human mind to think what it thinks existent, 
lapsing into non-existence, either in time past or in time future. 

Our inability to think, what we have once conceived existent 
in time, as in time becoming non-existent, corresponds with our 
inability to think, what we have conceived existent in space, 
as in space becoming non-existent. We can not realize it to 
thought, that a thing should be extruded, either from the one 
quantity or from the other. Hence, under extension, the law of 
ultimate incompressibility ; under protension, the law of cause 
and effect. 

I have hitherto spoken only of one inconceivable pole of the 
conditioned, in its application to existence in time, of the abso- 
lute extreme, as absolute commencement and absolute termina- 
tion. The counter or infinite extreme, as infinite regress or non- 
commencement, and infinite progress, or non-termination, is 
equally unthinkable. With this latter we have, however, at 
present nothing to do. Indeed, as not obtrusive, the Infinite fig- 
ures far less in the theatre of mind, and exerts a far inferior in- 
fluence in the modification of thought, than the Absolute. It is, 
in fact, both distant and delitescent ; and in place of meeting us 
at every turn, it requires some exertion on our part to seek it 
out. It is the former and more obtrusive extreme — it is the Ab- 
solute alone which constitutes and explains the mental manifest- 
ation of the causal judgment. An object is presented to our ob- 
servation which has phenomenally begun to be. But we can not 
construe it to thought, that the object, that is, this determinate 
complement of existence, had really no being at any past moment ; 
because, in that case, once thinking it as existent, we should 
again think it as non-existent, which is for us impossible. What 



584 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) 

then can we — must we do ? That the phenomenon presented to 
us, did, as a phenomenon, begin to he — this we know by expe- 
rience ; but that the elements of its existence only, began, when 
the phenomenon which they constitute came into manifested 
being — this we are wholly unable to think. In these circum- 
stances how do we proceed ? There is for us only one possible 
way. We are compelled to believe, that the object (that is the 
certain quale and quantum of being), whose phenomenal rise into 
existence we have witnessed, did really exist, prior to this rise, 
under other forms. But to say, that a thing previously existed 
under different forms, is only to say, in other words, that a thing 
had causes. (It would be here out of place to refute the error 
of philosophers, in supposing that any thing can have a single 
cause ; — meaning always by a cause that without which the 
effect would not have been. I speak of course only of second 
causes, for of the divine causation we can form no conception). 

I must, however, now cursorily observe, that nothing can be 
more erroneous in itself, or in its consequences more fertile in 
delusion, than the common doctrine, that the causal judgment is 
elicited, only when we apprehend objects in consecution, and uni- 
form consecution. No doubt, the observation of such succession 
prompts and enables us to assign particular causes to particular 
effects. But this assignation ought to be carefully distinguished 
from the judgment of causality, absolutely. This consists, not 
in the empirical and contingent attribution of this phenomenon, 
as cause, to that -phenomenon, as effect ; but in the universal 
necessity of which we are conscious, to think causes for every 
event, whether that event stand isolated by itself, and be by us 
referrible to no other, or whether it be one in a series of succes- 
sive phenomena, which, as it were, spontaneously arrange them- 
selves under the relation of effect and cause. On this, not sunk- 
en, rock, Dr. Brown and others have been shipwrecked. 

The preceding doctrine of causality seems to me the one pref- 
erable, for the following among other reasons. 

In the first place, to explain the phenomenon of the causal 
judgment, it postulates no new, no extraordinary, no express 
principle. It does not even proceed on the assumption of a posi- 
tive power ; for while it shows, that the phenomenon in question 
is only one of a class, it assigns, as their common cause, only a 
negative impotence. In this respect it stands advantageously 
contrasted with the only other theory which saves the pheno- 



CAUSALITY. 585 

menon, but which saves it, only on the hypothesis of a special 
principle, expressly devised to account for this phenomenon 
alone. But nature never works by more, and more complex, 
instruments than are necessary — jjbrjhev 7repiTTW9 : and to excogi- 
tate a particular force, to perform what can be better explained 
on the ground of a general imbecility, is contrary to every rule 
of philosophizing. 

But, in the second place, if there be postulated an express and 
positive affirmation of intelligence, to account for the mental de- 
liverance — that existence can not absolutely commence ; we must 
equally postulate a counter affirmation of intelligence, positive 
and express, to explain the counter mental deliverance — that 
existence can not infinitely not commence. The one necessity 
of mind is equally strong as the other ; and, if the one be a posi- 
tive datum, an express testimony of intelligence, so likewise must 
be the other. But they are contradictories ; and, as contradict- 
ories, they can not both be true. On this theory, therefore, the 
root of our nature is a lie. By the doctrine, on the contrary, 
which I propose, these contradictory phenomena are carried up 
into the common principle of a limitation of our faculties. In- 
telligence is shown to be feeble, but not false ; our nature is, 
thus, not a lie, nor ^the author of our nature a deceiver. 

In the third place, this simpler and easier doctrine, avoids a 
most serious inconvenience which attaches to the more difficult 
and complex. It is this. To suppose a positive and special prin- 
ciple of causality, is to suppose that there is expressly revealed 
to us, through intelligence, an affirmation of the fact, that there 
exists no free causation ; that is, that there is no cause which is 
not itself merely an effect, existence being only a series of deter- 
mined antecedents and determined consequents. But this is an 
assertion of Fatalism. Such, however, many of the partisans of 
that doctrine will not admit. An affirmation of absolute neces- 
sity is, they are aware, virtually the negation of a moral universe, 
consequently of the moral governor of a moral universe. But 
this is Atheism. Fatalism and Atheism are, indeed, convertible 
terms. The only valid arguments for the existence of a Grod, and 
for the immortality of the human soul, rest on the ground of man's 
moral nature ; consequently, if that moral nature be annihilated , 
which in any scheme of thoroughgoing necessity it is, every con- 
clusion, established on such a nature, is annihilated likewise. 
Aware of this, some of those who make the judgment of causality 



J 

586 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) 

a positive dictate of intelligence, find themselves compelled, in 
order to escape from the consequences of their doctrine, to deny 
that this dictate, though universal in its deliverance, should he 
allowed to hold universally true ; and accordingly, they would 
exempt from it the facts of volition. "Will, they hold to he a free 
cause, a cause which is not an effect ; in other words, they attri- 
bute to it the power of absolute origination. But here their own 
principle of causality is too strong for them. They say, that it 
is unconditionally promulgated, as an express and positive law 
of intelligence, that every origination is an apparent only, not a 
real, commencement. Now to exempt certain phenomena from 
this universal law, on the ground of our moral consciousness, can 
not validly be done. — For, in the first place, this would be an 
admission, that the mind is a complement of contradictory revela- 
tions. If mendacity be admitted of some of our mental dictates, 
we can not vindicate veracity to any. If one be delusive, so may 
all. " Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus." Absolute skepticism 
is here the legitimate conclusion. — But, in the second place, wav- 
ing this conclusion, what right have we, on this doctrine, to sub- 
ordinate the positive affirmation of causality to our consciousness 
of moral liberty — what right have we, for the interest of the lat- 
ter, to derogate from the former ? We have none. If both be 
equally positive, we are not entitled to sacrifice the alternative, 
which our wishes prompt us to abandon. 

But the doctrine which I propose is not obnoxious to these ob- 
jections. It does not maintain, that the judgment of causality 
is dependent on a power of the mind, imposing, as necessary in 
thought, what is necessary in the universe of existence. On the 
contrary, it resolves this judgment into a mere mental impotence 
— an impotence to conceive either of two contradictories. And 
as the one or the other of contradictories must be true, while 
both can not ; it proves, that there is no ground for inferring a 
certain fact to be impossible, merely from our inability to conceive 
it possible. At the same time, if the causal judgment be not an 
express affirmation of mind, but only an incapacity of thinking 
the opposite ; it follows, that such a negative judgment can not 
counterbalance the express affirmative, the unconditional testi- 
mony, of consciousness — that we are, though we know not how, 
the true and responsible authors of our actions, nor merely the 
worthless links in an adamantine series of effects and causes. It 
appears to me, that it is only on such a doctrine, that we can 



CAUSALITY. 587 

philosophically vindicate the liberty of the human will — that we 
can rationally assert to man — " fatis avolsa voluntas." Hoiv the 
will can possibly be free, must remain to us, under the present 
limitation of our faculties, wholly incomprehensible. "We are 
unable to conceive an absolute commencement ; we can not, 
therefore, conceive a free volition. A determination by motives 
can not, to our understanding, escape from necessitation. Nay, 
were we even to admit as true, what we can not think as possi- 
ble, still the doctrine of a motiveless volition would be only 
casualism ; and the free acts of an indifferent, are, morally and 
rationally, as worthless as the pre-ordered passions of a determ- 
ined, will. How, therefore, I repeat, moral liberty is possible 
in man or God, we are utterly unable speculatively to understand. 
But practically, the fact, that we are free, is given to us in the 
consciousness of an uncompromising law of duty, in the con- 
sciousness of our moral accountability ; and this fact of liberty 
can not be redargued on the ground that it is incomprehensible, 
for the philosophy of the conditioned proves, against the necessi 
tarian, that things there are, which may, nay must be true, of 
which the understanding is wholly unable to construe to itself 
the possibility. 

But this philosophy is not only competent to defend the fact 
of our moral liberty, possible though inconceivable, against the 
assault of the fatalist ; it retorts against himself the very objec- 
tion of incomprehensibility by which the fatalist had thought to 
triumph over the libertarian. It shows, that the scheme of free- 
dom is not more inconceivable than the scheme of necessity. For 
while fatalism is a recoil from the more obtrusive inconceivability 
of an absolute commencement, on the fact of which commence- 
ment the doctrine of liberty proceeds ; the fatalist is shown to 
overlook the equal, but less obtrusive, inconceivability of an in- 
finite non-commencement, on the assertion of which non-com- 
mencement his own doctrine of necessity must ultimately rest. 
As equally unthinkable, the two counter, the two one-sided, 
schemes are thus theoretically balanced. But practically, our 
consciousness of the moral law, which, without a moral liberty 
in man, would be a mendacious imperative, gives a decisive pre- 
ponderance to the doctrine of freedom over the doctrine of fate 
We are free in act, if we are accountable for our actions. 

Such ((fiwvaPTa avverocaiv) are the hints of an undeveloped 
philosophy, which, I am confident, is founded upon truth. To 



588 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) 

this confidence I have come, not merely through the convictions 
of my own consciousness, but by finding in this system a centre 
and conciliation for the most opposite of philosophical opinions. 
Above all, however, I am confirmed in my belief, by the harmony 
between the doetrines of this philosophy, and those of revealed 
truth. " Credo equidem, nee vana fides." The philosophy of the 
Conditioned is indeed pre-eminently a discipline of humility ; a 
" learned ignorance," directly opposed to the false " knowledge 
which puffeth up." I may indeed say with St. Chrysostom : — 
" The foundation of our philosophy is humility." — (Homil. de 
Perf. Evang.) For it is professedly a scientific demonstration of 
the impossibility of that " wisdom in high matters" which the 
Apostle prohibits us even to attempt ; and it proposes, from the 
limitation of the human powers, from our impotence to compre- 
hend what, however, we must admit, to show articulately why 
the " secret things of God" can not but be to man " past finding 
out." Humility thus becomes the cardinal virtue, not only of 
revelation but of reason. This scheme proves moreover, that no 
difficulty emerges in theology, which had not previously emerged 
in philosophy ; that, in fact, if the divine do not transcend what 
it has pleased the Deity to reveal, and willfully identify the doc- 
trine of G-od's word with some arrogant extreme of human specu- 
lation, philosophy will be found the most useful auxiliary of 
theology. For a word of false, and pestilent, and presumptuous 
reasoning, by which philosophy and theology are now equally 
discredited, would be at once abolished, in the recognition of this 
rule of prudent nescience ; nor could it longer be too justly said' 
of the code of consciousness, as by reformed divines it has been 
acknowledged of the Bible : 

" This is the book, where each his dogma seeks ; 
And this the book, where each his dogma finds." 

Specially ; in its doctrine of causality this philosophy brings us 
back from the aberrations of modern theology, to the truth and 
simplicity of the more ancient church. It is here shown to be as 
irrational as irreligious, on the ground of human understanding, 
to deny, either, on the one hand, the foreknowledge, predestina- 
tion, and free grace of G-od, or, on the other, the free will of man ; 
that we should believe both, and both in unison, though unable 
to comprehend either even apart. This philosophy proclaims with 
St. Augustin, and Augustin in his maturest writings : — " If there 
be not free grace in (rod, how can He save the world ? and if 



CAUSALITY. 589 

there be not free will in man, how can the world by (rod be 
judged?" (Ad Valentinum, Epist. 214.) Or, as the same doc- 
trine is perhaps expressed even better by St. Bernard : — " Abolish 
free will, and there is nothing to be saved ; abolish free grace, 
and there is nothing wherewithal to save." (De Gratia et Libero 
Arbitrio. c. i.) St. Austin repeatedly declares, the conciliation 
of the foreknowledge, predestination, and free grace of Gfod with 
the free will of man, to be " a most difficult question, intelligible 
only to a few." Had he denounced it as a fruitless question, and 
(to understanding) soluble by none, the world might have been 
spared a large library of acrimonious and resultless disputation. 
This conciliation is of the things to be believed, not understood. 
The futile attempts to harmonize these antilogies, by human 
reasoning to human understanding, have originated confliotive 
systems of theology, divided the Church, and, as far as possible, 
dishonored religion. It must, however, be admitted, that confes- 
sions of the total inability of man to conceive the union, of what 
he should believe united, are to be found ; and they are found, 
not, perhaps, less frequently, and certainly in more explicit terms 
among Catholic than among Protestant theologians. 

Of the former, I shall adduce only one testimony, by a prince 
of the Church ; and it is the conclusion of what, though wholly 
overlooked, appears to me as the ablest and truest criticism of the 
many fruitless, if not futile, attempts at conciliating " the ways 
of G-od" to the understanding of man, in the great articles of 
divine foreknowledge and predestination (which are both embar- 
rassed by the self same difficulties), and human free will. It is 
the testimony of Cardinal Cajetan, and from his commentary on 
the Summa Theologise of Aquinas. The criticism itself I may 
take another opportunity of illustrating. 

" Thus elevating our mental eye to a loftier range, [we may suppose 
that] God, from an excellence supernally transcending human thought, so 
foresees events and things, that from his providence something higher fol- 
lows than evitability or inevitability, and that his passive prevision of the 
event does not determine the alternative of either combination. And can 
we do so, the intellect is quieted ; not by the evidence of the truth known, 
but by the inaccessible heighth of the truth concealed. And this to my 
poor intellect seems satisfactory enough, both for the reason above stated, 
and because, as Saint Gregory expresses it, ' The man has a low opinion 
of God, who believes of Him only so much as can be measured by human 
understanding.' Not that we should deny aught, that we have by knowl- 
edge or by faith of the immutability, actuality, certainty, universality, and 
similar attributes of God ; but I suspect that there is something here lying 



590 . APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (A.) 

hid, either as regards the relation between the Deity and event foreseen, 
or as regards the connection between the event itself and its prevision. 
Thus, reflecting that the intelligence of man [in such matters], is as the 
eye of the owl [in the blaze of day (he refers to Aristotle),] I find its 
repose in ignorance alone. For it is more consistent, both with Catholic 
faith and with philosophy, to confess our blindness, than to assert, as things 
evident, what afford no tranquillity to the intellect ; for evidence is tran- 
quillizing. Not that 1 would, therefore, accuse all the doctors of presump- 
tion ; because, stammering, as they could, they have all intended to in- 
sinuate, with God's immutability, the supreme and eternal efficiency of His 
intellect, and will, and power — through the infallible relation between the 
Divine election and whatever comes to pass. Nothing of all this is opposed 
to the foresaid suspicion — that something too deep for us lies hid herein. 
And assuredly, if it were thus promulgated, no Christian would err in the 
matter of Predestination, as no one errs in the doctrine of the Trinity ; x 
because of the Trinity the truth is declared orally and in writing — that 
this is a mystery concealed from human intellect, and to which faith alone 
is competent. Indeed, the best and most wholesome counsel in this matter 
is : — To begin with those things which we certainly know, and have ex- 
perience of in ourselves ; to wit, that all proceeding from our free will may 
or may not be performed by us, and therefore are we amenable to pun- 
ishment or reward ; but how, this being saved, there shall be saved the 
providence, predestination, &c, of God — to believe what holy mother 
Church believes. For it is written, ' Altiora te ne qusesieris' (' Be not wise 
in things above thee') ; there being many things revealed to man, above 
thy human comprehension. And this is one of those." (Pars I. qu. xxii., 
art. 4.) 

Averments to a similar effect, might be adduced from the writ- 
ings of Calvin; and, certainly, nothing can be conceived more 
contrary to the doctrine of that great divine, than what has lat- 
terly been promulgated as Calvinism (and, in so far as I know, 
without reclamation), in our Calvinistic Church of Scotland. For 
it has been here promulgated, as the dogma of this Church, by 
pious and distinguished theologians, that man has no will, agency, 
moral personality of his own, God being the only real agent in 
every apparent act of his creatures ; in short (though quite the 
opposite was intended), that the theological scheme of the absolute 
decrees implies fatalism, pantheism, the negation of a moral gov- 
ernor, and of a moral world. For the premises, arbitrarily as- 
sumed, are atheistic ; the conclusion, illogically drawn, is Chris- 
tian. Against such a view of Calvin's doctrine, I for one most 
humbly though solemnly protest, as not only false in philosophy, 
but heterodox and ignorant in theology. 

1 This was written before 1507 ; consequently long before Servetus and Campanus 
had introduced their unitarian heresies. 



LEARNED IGNORANCE. 591 



(B.) PHILOSOPHICAL TESTIMONIES 

TO THE LIMITATION OF OUR KNOWLEDGE, FROM 

THE LIMITATION OF OUR FACULTIES. 

These, which might he indefinitely multiplied, I shall arrange 
under three heads. I omit the Skeptics, adducing only specimens 
from the others. 

I. Testimonies to the general fact, that the highest knowledge 
is a consciousness of ignorance. 
There are two sorts of ignorance : we philosophize to escape 
ignorance, and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance ; 
we start from the one, we repose in the other ; they are the goals 
from which, and to which, we tend : and the pursuit of knowledge 
is hut a course hetween two ignorances, as human life is itself 
only a traveling from grave to grave. 

"'Ttr j3ios;' — -Ek Tvpfioio dopav, em tv/m^ov 6Sfvco." 

The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition 
of human ignorance ; " Qui nescit ignorare, ignorat scire." This 
"learned ignorance" is the rational conviction hy the human 
mind of its inahility to transcend certain limits ; it is the knowl- 
edge of ourselves—the science of man. This is accomplished hy 
a demonstration of the disproportion hetween what is to be known, 
and our faculties of knowing- — the disproportion, to wit, hetween 
the infinite and the finite. In fact, the recognition of human 
ignorance, is not only the one highest, hut the one true, knowl- 
edge ; and its first fruit, as has been said, is humility. Simple 
nescience is not proud ; consummated science is positively humble 
For this knowledge it is not, which " puffeth up ;" hut its oppc 
site, the conceit of false knowledge— the conceit, in truth, as the 
Apostle notices, of an ignorance of the very nature of knowledge' 

" Nam nesciens quid scire sit, 
Te scire cuncta jactitas." 

But as our knowledge stands to Ignorance, so stands it also to 
Doubt. Doubt is the beginning and the end of our efforts to 
know; for as it is true — " Alte dubitat qui altius credit," so it is 
likewise true — " Q,uo magis quserimus magis dubitamus." 

The grand result of human wisdom is thus only a conscious- 
ness that what we know is as nothing to what we know not 



592 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (B.) 

(" Quantum est quod nescimus !") — an articulate confession, in 
fact, by our natural reason, of the truth declared in revelation — 
that "now we see through a glass, darkly." 

1. — Democritus (as reported by Aristotle, Cicero, Sextus Empiricus, 
&c.) : — " We know nothing in its cause [or on a conjectural reading — in 
truth] ; for truth lies hid from us in depth and distance." 

2. — Socrates (as we learn from Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, &c), was 
declared by the Delphic oracle the wisest of the Greeks ; and why ? 
Because he taught — that all human knowledge is but a qualified ignorance. 

3. — Aristotle. (Metaphysica, L. ii. c. 1). — "A theory of Truth, is partly 
easy, partly difficult. This is shown by the fact — that no one has been 
wholly successful, and no one wholly unsuccessful, in its acquisition ; but, 
while each has had some report to make concerning nature, though the 
contributions, severally considered, are of little or no avail, the whole toge- 
ther make up a considerable amount. And if so it be, we may apply the 
proverb — ' Who can miss the gate ?' In this respect, a theory of Truth 
is easy. — But our inability to compass some Whole and Part lor, to c. both 
W. and P.] may evince the difficulty of the inquiry ; (To d' bXov ti (orr') 
£%£tv fcai nipoc p) dvvaoOai, drjXol to xaXenbv avTijc;). — As difficulty, 
however, arises in two ways ; [in this case] its cause may lie, not in things 
[as the objects known], but in us [as the subjects knowing]. For as the 
eye of the bat holds to the light of day, so the intellect [vovg, which is, as 
it were (Eth. Nic. i. 7) the eye] of our soul, holds to what in nature are 
of all most manifest." 1 

4. — Pliny. (Historia Naturalis, L ii. c. 32.) — " Omnia incerta ratione, 
et in naturas maj estate abdita." 

5. — Tertullian. (AdversusHaereticos, N. iv.) — |: Cedatcuriositasfidei, 
cedat gloria saluti. Certe, aut non obstrepant, aut quiescant adversus 
regulam — Nihil scire omnia scire est." — (De Anima, c. 1.) — " Q,uis reve- 
labit quod Deus texit ? Unde scitandum ? Gluare ignorare tutissimum 
est. Prsastat enim per Deum nescire quia non revelaverit, quam per ho- 
minem scire quia ipse pra3sumpserit." 



1 In now translating this passage for a more general purpose, I am strongly im- 
pressed with the opinion, that Aristotle had in view the special doctrine of the Con- 
ditioned. For it is not easy to see what he could mean by saying, that " we are un- 
able to have [compass, realize the notions of] Whole and Part," or of " some Whole 
and Part ;" except to say, that we are unable to conceive (of space, or time, or degree) 
a whole, however large, which is not conceivable as the part of a still greater whole, 
or a part, however small, which we may not always conceive as a whole, divisible 
into parts. But this would be implicitly the enouncement of a full doctrine of the 
Conditioned. Be this however as it may, Aristotle's commentators have been wholly 
unable to reach, even by a probable conjecture, his meaning in the text. Alexander 
gives six or seven possible interpretations, but all nothing to the point ; while the 
other expositors whom I have had patience to look into (as Averroes, Javellus, Fon- 
seca, Suarez. Sonerus), either avoid the sentence altogether, or show that they, and 
the authorities whom they quote, had no glimpse of a satisfactory interpretation. I 
have been unable to find (on a hurried search) in the able and truly learned " Essay 
on the Metaphysics of Aristotle'' by M. Ravaisson, a consideration of the passage. 



LEARNED IGNORANCE. 593 

6. — Arnobius. (Contra Gentes, L. ii.) — " Gluse nequeunt sciri, nescire 
nos confiteamur ; neque ea vestigare curemus, quee non posse comprehendi 
liquidissimum est." 

7. — St. Augustin. (Serrao xxvii. Benedictine Edition, vol. v.) — 
" Queeris tu rationem, ego expavesco altitudinem. ('0 altitudo divitia- 
rum sapientise et scientise Dei !') Tu ratiocinare, ego mirer ; tu disputa, 
ego credam ; altitudinem video, ad profundum non pervenio. .... 
Ille dicit, ' Inscrutabilia sunt judicia ejus:' et tu scrutari venisti ? Ule 
dicit — ' Ininvestigabiles sunt viaB ejus :' et tu investigare venisti ? Si 
inscrutabilia scrutari venisti, et ininvestigabilia investigare venisti ; crede 
jam peristi." — (Sermo xciii.) — " Gtuid inter nos agebatur ? Tu dicebas, 
Intelligam, ut credam; ego dicebam, Ut intelligas, crede. Nata est 
controversia, veniamus ad judicem, judicet Propheta, immo vero Deus 
judicet per Prophetam. Ambo taceamus. Quid ambo dixerimus, audi- 
tum est. Intelligam, inquis, ut credam ; Crede, inquam, ut intelligas. 
Respondeat Propheta : ' Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis.' " [Isaiah vii. 
9, according to the Seventy.] — (Sermo cxvii.) — " De Deo loquimur, quid 
mirum, si non comprehendis ? Si enim comprehendis, non est Deus, 
Sit pia confessio ignorantice magis quam temeraria professio scientice. 
Adtingere aliquantum mente Deum, magna beatitudo est ; comprehendere 
autem, omnino impossibile." 1 — (Sermo clxv.) — " Ideo multi de isto pro- 
fundo quasrentes reddere rationem, in fabulas vanitatis abierunt." [Com- 
pare Sermo cxxvi. c. i.] — (Sermo cccii.) — " Confessio ignorantise, gradus 
est scientise." — (Epistola cxc. vol. ii.) — " Q/ase nullo sensu carnis explo- 
rari possunt, et a nostra experientia longe remota sunt, atque in abditissi- 
mis naturse finibus latent, non erubescendum est homini confiteri se nescire 
quod nescit, ne dum se scire mentitur, nunquam scire mereatur." — (Epis- 
tola cxcvii.) — " Magis eligo cautam ignorantiam confiteri, quam falsam 
scientiam profiteri." 

8. — St. Chrysostom. — " Nothing is wiser than ignorance in those mat- 
ters, where they who proclaim that they know nothing, proclaim their para- 
mount wisdom ; while those who busy themselves therein, are the most 
senseless of mankind." 

9. — Theodoret. (Therapeutica, &c, Curative of Greek Affections, 
Sermon 1.) — "The beginning of science is the science of nescience;" or 
— " The principle of knowledge is the knowledge of ignorance." 

10. — St. Peter Chrysologue. (Sermo li.) — "Nolle omnia scire, 
summa scientia3 est." 

11. — " The Arabian Sage" (I translate this and the two following 
from Drusius and Gale) : — " A man is wise while in pursuit of wisdom ; 
a fool, when he thinks it to be mastered." 

12. — A Rabbi : — " The wiser a man, the more ignorant does he feel ; 
as the Preacher has it [i. 18] — ' To add science is to add sorrow.' " 



1 A century before Augustin, St. Cyprian had said : — " We can only justly conceive 
God in recognizing Him to be inconceivable." I can not, however, at the moment, 
refer to the passage except from memory. 

Pp 



594 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (B.) 

13. — A Rabbi : — " Who knows nothing, and thinks that he knows 
something, his ignorance is twofold." 1 

14. — Petrarch. (De Contemptu Mundi, Dial, ii.) — " Excute pectus 
tuum acriter ; invenies cuncta quse nosti, si ad ignorata referantur, earn 
proportionem obtinere, quarn, collatus oceano, rivulus eestivis siccandus 
ardoribus : quamquam vel multa nosse, quid revelat ?" 

15- — Cardinal De Cusa. (Opera ed. 1565; De Docta Ignorantia, L. 
i. c. 3, p. 3.) — " Q,uidditas ergo rerum, quae est entium Veritas, in sua 
puritate inattingibilis est ; et per omnes Philosophos investigata, sed per 
neminem, uti est, reperta ; et quanto in hac ignorantia profundius docti 
fuerimus, tanto magis ad ipsam accedemus veritatem." — (lb. c. 17, p. 13.) 
— " Sublata igitur ab omnibus entibus participatione, remanetipsa simpli- 
cissima entitas, quse est essentia omnium entium, et non conspicimus ipsam 
talem entitatem, nisi in doctissima ignorantia, quoniam cum omnia parti- 
cipantia entitatem ab animo removeo, nihil remanere videtur. Et prop- 
terea magnus Dionysius [Areopagita] dicit, intellectum Dei, magis accedere 
ad nihil, quam ad aliquid. Sacra autem ignorantia me instruit, hoc quod 
intellectui nihil videtur, esse maximum incomprehensibile." — (Apologia 
Doctss Ignorantise, p. 67.) — " Augustinus ait: — ' Deum potius ignorantia 
quam scientia attingi.' Ignorantia enim abjicit, intelligentia colligit ; 
docta vero ignorantia omnes modos quibus accedi ad veritatem potest, unit. 
Ita eleganter dixit Algazel in sua Metaphysica, de Deo : ' Gluod quisque 
scit per probationem necessariam, impossibilitatem suam apprehendendi 
eum. Ipse sui est cognitor, et apprehensor ; quoniam apprehendit, scire 
ipsum a nullo posse comprehendi. Gluisquis autem non potest apprehen- 
dere, et nescit necessario esse impossibile eum apprehendere, per probatio- 
nem prsedictam, est ignorans Deum : et tales sunt omnes homines, excep- 
tis dignis, et prophetis et sapientibus, qui sunt profundi in sapientia.' 
Hsec ille." — See also : De Beryllo, c. 36, p. 281 ; De Yenatione Sapien- 
tial, c. 12, p. 306 ; De Deo Abscondito, p. 338; &c. &c. 2 

1 Literally : 

" Te, tenebris jactum, ligat ignorantia duplex ; 
Scis nihil, et nescis te modo scire nihil." 

Or, with reference to our German evolvers of the Nothing into the Everything ; and 
avoiding the positio debilis : 

" Te, sophia insanum, terit insipientia triplex ; 
Nil sapis, et nil non te sapuisse doces !" 

2 So far, Cusa's doctrine coincides with what I consider to be the true precept of 
a " Learned Ignorance." But he goes farther : and we find his profession of negative 
ignorance converted into an assumption of positive knowledge ; his Nothing, presto, 
becoming every thing ; and contradictions, instead of standing an insuperable barrier 
to all intellectual cognition, employed in laying its foundation. In fact, I make no 
doubt that his speculations have originated the whole modern philosophy of the Abso- 
lute. For Giordano Bruno, as I can show, was well acquainted with Cusa's writings ; 
from these he borrowed his own celebrated theory, repeating even the language in 
which its doctrines were originally expressed. To Cusa, we can indeed, articulately 
trace, word and thing, the recent philosophy of the Absolute. The term Absolute 
(Absolutum), in its precise and peculiar signification, he every where employs. The 
Intellectual Intuition (Intuitio Intellectualis) he describes and names ; nay, we find in 
him, even the process of Hegel's Dialectic. His works are, indeed, instead of the 
neglect to which they have been doomed, well deserving of attentive study in many 
relations. In Astronomy, before Copernicus, he had promulgated the true theory of 



LEARNED IGNORANCE. 596 

16. ■ — JEneas Sylvius. (Piccolomini, Pope Pius II. Rhet. L. ii.) — " Cui 
plura nosse datum est, eum majora dubia sequuntur." 

17.— Palingenius. (Zodiacus Vitse, Virgo v. 181, sq.) 
" Tunc mea Dux tandem pulcro sic incipit ore : — 
Simia coelicolum 1 risusque jocusque Deorum est 
Tunc homo, quum temere ingenio confidit, et audet 
Abdita naturse scrutari, arcanaque Divum, 
Cum re vera ejus crassa imbecillaque sit mens. 
Si posita ante pedes nescit, quo juro videbit 
Q,ua3 Deus et natura sinu occuluere profundo ? 
Omnia se tamen arbitrator noscere ad unguem 
Garrulus, infelix, csecus, temerarius, amens ; 
Usque adeo sibi palpatur, seseque licetur." 

18. — "Multa tegit sacro involucro natura, neque ullis 
Fas est scire quidem mortalibus omnia ; multa 
Admirare modo, nee non venerare : neque ilia 
Inquires quse sunt arcanis proxima ; namque 
In manibus quse sunt, lisec nos vix scire putandum. 
Est procul a nobis adeo pra?sentia veri !" 2 

(" Full many a secret in her sacred vail 

Hath Nature folded. She vouchsafes to knowledge 

Not every mystery, reserving much, 

For human veneration, not research. 

Let us not, therefore, seek what God conceals ; 

For even the things which lie within our hands— 

These, knowing, we know not. — So far from us, 

In doubtful dimness, gleams the star of truth !") 



the heavenly revolutions, with the corollary of a plurality of worlds ; and in the science 
of Politics, he was the first perhaps to enounce the principles on which a representa- 
tive constitution should be based. The Germans have, however, done no justice to 
their countryman. For Cusa's speculations have been most perfunctorily noticed by 
German historians of philosophy ; and it is through Bruno that he seems to have ex- 
erted an influence on the Absolutist theories of the Empire. 

1 The comparison of man as an ape to God, is from Plato, who, while he repeatedly 
exhibits human beings as the jest of the immortals, somewhere says — " The wisest 
man, if compared with God, will appear an ape." Pope, who was well read in the 
modern Latin poets, especially of Italy, and even published from them a selection in two 
volumes, abounds in manifest imitations of their thoughts, wholly unknown to his com- 
mentators. In his line — • 

" And shew'd a Newton as we shew an ape," 

— he had probably this passage of Palingenius in his eye, and not Plato. Warburton 
and his other scholiasts are aware of no suggestion. 

2 I know not the author of these verses. I find them first quoted by Fernelius, in 
his book "De Abditis Rerum Causis" (L. ii. c. 18), which appeared before the year 
1551. They may be his own. They are afterward given by Sennertus, in his Hy- 
pomnemata, but without an attribution of authorship. By him, indeed, they are undoubt- 
edly taken from Fernelius. Finally, they are adduced by the learned Morhof, in his 
Polyhistor, who very unlearnedly, however, assigns them to Lucretius. They are not 
by Palingenius, nor Palearius, nor Hospitalius, all of whose versification they resem- 
ble ; for the last, indeed, they are almost too early. \; 



69G APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (B.) 

19. — Julius Cesar Scaliger. (De Subtilitate, Ex. cclxxiv.) " Sapien- 
tia est vera, nolle nimis sapere." (lb. Ex. cccvii. sect. 29 ; and compare 
Ex. cccxliv. sect. 4.) " Humana? sapiential pars est, qusedam aequo animo 
nescire velle." 1 (lb. Ex. lii.) " Ubique clamare soleo, nos nihil scire." 

20. — Joseph Justus Scaliger. (Poemata : Iambi Gnomici. xxi.) 
" Ne curiosus queer -e causas omnium. 
Gtua^cunque libris vis Prophetarum indidit 
Afflata coelo, plena veraci Deo, 
Nee operta sacri supparo silentii 
Irrumpere aude, sed pudenter preeteri. 
Nescire velle, quce magister maximus 
Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est." 2 

21. — Grotius. (Poemata ; Epigrammata, L. i.) 
Erudita Ignorantia. 
" Glui curiosus postulat Totum sua? 
Patere menti, ferre qui non sufficit 
Mediocritatis conscientiam sua?, 
Judex iniquus, estimator est malus 
Suique naturseque. Nam rerum parens, 
Libanda tantum qua? venit mortalibus, 
Nos scire pauca, multa mirari jubet. 
Hie primus error auctor est pejoribus. 
Nam qui fateri nil potest incognitum, 
Falso necesse est placet ignorantiam ; 
Umbrasque inanes captet inter nubila, 
Imaginosse adulter Ixion Dese. 
Magis quiescet animus, errabit minus, 
Contentus eruditione parabili, 
Nee qua?ret illam, siqua quserentem fugit. 
Nescire qucedam, magna pars Sapientice est." 3 

22. — Pascal. (Pensees, Partie I. Art. vi. sect. 26.) — " Si l'homme com- 
mencoit par s'etudier lui-meme, il verroit combien il est incapable de passer 
outre. Comment pourroit-il se faire qu'une partie connut le tout?" 4 - - 
- - " Glui ne croiroit, a nous voir composer toutes choses d'esprit et de 
corps, que ce melange-la nous seroit bien comprehensible ? C'est nean- 
moins la chose que Ton comprend le moins. L'homme est a lui-meme le 

1 I meant (above, p. 44) to quote this passage of Scaliger, but find that my recollec- 
tion confused this and the preceding passage, with perhaps, the similar testimony of 
Chrysologus (No. 10). Chrysologus, indeed, anticipates Scaliger in the most felici- 
tous part of the expression. 

8 It is manifest that Joseph, in these verses, had in his eye the saying of his father. 
But I have no doubt, that they were written on occasion of the controversy raised by 
Gomarus against Arminius. 

3 In this excellent epigram, Grotius undoubtedly contemplated the corresponding 
verses of his illustrious friend, the Dictator of the Republic of Letters ; but, at the 
same time, he, an Arminian, certainly had in view the polemic of the Remonstrants 
and anti-Remonstrants, touching the Divine Decrees. Nor, apparently, was he igno- 
rant of testimonies Nos. 17, 18. 

4 This testimony of Pascal corresponds to what Aristotle says : — " There is no pro- 
portion of the Infinite to the Finite." (De Coelo, L. i. cc. 7, 8.) 



LEARNED IGNORANCE, 597 

plus prodigieux objet de la nature ; car il ne peut concevoir ce que c'est quQ 
corps, et encore moins ce que c'est qu'esprit, et moins qu'aucune chose conir 
ment un corps peut etre uni avec un esprit. C'est la le comble de ses diffi. 
cultes, et cependant c'est son propre etre : Modus, quo corporibus adhceret 
spirit-us, comprehendi ab hominibus non potest; et hoc tamen homo est." 1 

II. Testimonies to the more special fact, that all our knowledge, 
whether of Mind or of Matter, is only phenomenal. 
Our whole knowledge of mind and matter is relative — con- 
ditioned — relatively conditioned. Of things absolutely or in 
themselves, be they external, be they internal, we know nothing, 
or know them only as incognizable ; and we become aware of 
their incomprehensible existence, only as this is indirectly and 
accidentally revealed to us, through certain qualities related to 
our faculties of knowledge, and which qualities, again, we can not 
think as unconditioned, irrelative, existent in and of themselves. 
All that we know is therefore phenomenal — phenomenal of the 
unknown. 2 The philosopher speculating the worlds of matter 
and of mind, is thus, in a certain sort, only an ignorant admirer. 
In his contemplation of the universe, the philosopher, indeed, 
resembles iEneas contemplating the adumbrations on his shield; 
as it may equally be said of the sage and of the hero — 

" Miratur; Rerumque ignarus, Imagine gaudet." 

Nor is this denied ; for it has been commonly confessed, that, as 
substances, we know not what is Matter and are ignorant of what 
is. Mind. With the exception, in fact, of a few late Absolutist 
theorizers in Germany, this is, perhaps the truth of all others 
most harmoniously re-echoed by every philosopher of every 
school ; and, as has so frequently been done, to attribute any 



1 Pascal apparently quotes these words from memory, and, I have no doubt, quotes 
them from Montaigne, who thus (L. ii. ch. 12) adduces them as from St. Augustin : 
" Modus, quo corporibus adhaerent spiritus, omnino mirus est, nee comprehendi ab 
homine potest ; et hoc ipse homo est." — Montaigne's commentator, Pierre Coste, says 
that these words are from Augustin, De Spiritu et Anima. That curious farrago, 
which is certainly not Aagustin's, does not, however, contain either the sentence or the 
sentiment ; and Coste himself, who elsewhere gives articulate references to the quota- 
tions of his author, here alleges only the treatise in general. 

2 Hypostasis in Greek (of ovo-ia I do not now speak, nor of hypostasis in its eccle- 
siastical signification), and the corresponding term in Latin, Substantia (per se subsis- 
tens, or substans, i. e. accidentibus, whichever it may mean), expresses a relation — a 
relation to its phenomena. A basis for phenomena, is, in fact, only supposed, by a 
necessity of our thought ; even as a relative it is not positively known. On this real 
and verbal relativity, see St. Augustin (De Trinitate, 1. vii. cc. 4, 5, 6.) — Of the am- 
biguous term Subject (JjTTOKei^evop) I have avoided speaking. 



598 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (B). 

merit, or any singularity to its recognition by any individual 
thinker, more especially in modern times, betrays only the ignor- 
ance of the encomiasts. 

1. — Protagoras (as reported by Plato, Aristotle, Sextus Empiricus, 
Laertius, &c.) — " Man is [for himself] the measure of all things." (See 
Bacon, No. 14.) 

2. — Aristotle. (Metaphysica, L. vii. c. 10.) — " Matter is incognizable 
absolutely or in itself." — (De Anima, L. iii. c. 5.) — " The intellect knows 
itself, only in knowing its objects." — The same doctrine is maintained at 
length in the Metaphysics, b. xii. cc. 7 and 9, and elsewhere. 

3. — St. Augustin. (De Trinitate, L. ix. cc. 1, 2.) The result is — 
" Ab utroque notitia paritur ; a cognoscente et cognito." — (lb. L. x. cc. 3 
-12.) Here he shows that we know Mind only from phenomena of which 
we are conscious ; and that all the theories, in regard to the substance of 
what thinks, are groundless conjectures. — (Confessionum, L. xii. c. 5.) — 
Of our attempts to cognize the basis of material qualities he says ; " Dum 
sibi hsec dicit humana cogitatio, conetur earn, vel nosse ignorando, vel ig- 
norare noscendo." 

4. — Boethius. (De Consolatione Philosophise, L. v. pr. 4.) — " Omne 
quod cognoscitur, non secundum sui vim, sed secundum cognoscentium 
potius comprehenditur facultatem." — (Pr. 6.) — " Omne quod scitur, non 
ex sua, sed ex comprehendentium, natura cognoscitur." 

5. — Aa'erroes. (In Aristotelem De Anima, L. iii. Text. 8.) — " Intellec- 
tus intelligit seipsum modo accidentali." 

6. — Albertus Magnus. (Contra Averroem de Unitate Intellectus, c. 7.) 
" Intellectus non intelligit seipsum, nisi per accidens fiat intelligibile ; ut 
materia cognoscitur per aliquid, cujus ipsa est fundamentum. Et si aliqui 
dicant intellectum intelligi per hoc, quia, per essentiam est praesens sibi 
ipsi, hoc tamen secundum philosophiam non potest dici." (See also Aqui- 
nas (Summa Theologise, P. i. Glu. 89, Art. 2 ; De Veritate, Glu. 10, Art. 
8) and Ferrariensis (Contra Gentes, L. iii. c. 46.) 

7. — Gerson. (De Concordia Metaphysical) — "Ens quodlibet dicit pot- 
est habere duplex Esse ; sumendo Esse valde transcendentaliter. ITno 
modo, sumitur Ens, pro natura rei in seipsa ; alio modo, prout habet esse, 
objectale seu reprsesentativum, in ordine ad intellectum creatum vel in- 
creatum. — Hsec autem distinctio non conficta est vel nova : sed a doctor- 
ibus, tarn metaphysicis quam logicis subtilibus, introducta. Ens consider- 
atum seu relictum prout quid absolutum, seu res quaedam in seipsa, plu- 
rimum differt ab esse, quod habet objectaliter apud intellectum. - - - - 
Ens reale non potest constituere scientiam aliquam, si non consideretur in 
suo esse objectali, relato ad ipsum ens reale, sicut ad primarium et prin 
cipale objectum." 

8. — Leo Hebr^eus. (De Amore, Dial, i.) — " Cognita res a cognoscente, 
pro viribus ipsius cognoscentis, haud pro rei cognita? dignitate recipi solet." 

9. — Melanchthon. (Erotemata Dialectices, L. i. Pr. Substantia.)— 
" Mens humana, per accidentia, agnoscit substantiam. Non enim cernimus 



RELATIVITY OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 599 

oculis substantias, tectas accidentibus, sed mente eas agnoscimus. Cum 
videmus aquammanereeandem,sivesit frigida, sive sitcalida,ratiocinamur : 
— aliud quiddam esse formas illas discedentes, et aliud quod eas sustinet." 

10. — Julius Cesar Scalig-er. (De Subtilitate, Ex. cccvii. § 12.) — 
" Nego tibi ullam esse forraara nobis notam plene, et plane : nostramque 
scientiam esse umbram in sole [contendo]. Formarum enim cognitio est 
rudis, confusa, nee nisi per nspLordoecg. Neque verum est — formse sub- 
stantialis speciem recipi in intellectum. Non enim in sensu unquam fuit." 
— (lb. Ex. cccvii. $ 21.) — " Substantias non sua specie cognosci a nobis, 
sed per earum accidentia. Q,uis enim me doceat, quid sit substantia, nisi 
illis miseris verbis — res subsistens ? - - - - Gluid ipsa ilia substantia 
sit, plane ignoras ; sed, sicut Vulpes elusa a Ciconia, lambimus vitreum vas, 
pultem haud attingimus." 

11. — Francis Piccolomini. (De Mente Humana. L. i. c. 8.) — " Mens 
intelligit se, non per se primo, sed cum csetera intellexerit ; ut dicitur in 
L. iii. de Anima. t. 8, et in L. xii. Metaphysicse, t. 38." 

12. — Giordano Bruno. (De Imaginum, Signorum et Idearum Compo- 
sitione ; Dedicatio.) — " Gluemadmodum, non nosmetipsos in profundo et 
individuo quodam consistentes, sed nostri qusedam externa de superficie 
(colorem, scilicet, atque figuram) accidentia, ut oculi ipsius similitudinem 
in speculo, videre possumus ; ita etiain, neque intellectus noster se ipsam 
in se ipso, et res ipsas omnes in seipsis, sed in exteriore quadam specie, 
simulacro, imagine, figura, signo. Hoc quod ab Aristotele relatum, ab 
antiquis prius fuit expressum ; et a neotericorum paucis capitur Intelli- 
gere nostrum (id est, operationes nostri intellectus), aut est phantasia, aut 
non sine phantasia. Rursum. Non intelligimus, nisi phantasmata spe- 
culamur. Hoc est, quod non in simplicitate quadam, statu et unitate, sed 
in compositione, collatione, terminorum pluralitate, mediante discursu 
atque reflexione, comprehendimus." 1 

13. — Campanella. (Metaphysica. L. i. c. 1. dub. 3, p. 12.) — "Ergo, 
non videntur res prout sunt, neque videntur extare nisi respectus." 

14. — Bacon. (Instauratio Magna ; Distr. Op.) — " Informatio sensus 
semper est ex analogia hominis, non ex analogia universi ; atque magno 
prorsus errore asseritur, sensum esse mensuram rerum." (See Protagoras, 
n. 1.) 

15. — Spinoza. (Ethices, Pars II. Prop, xix.) — " Mens humana ipsum 
humanum corpus non cognoscit, nee ipsum existere scit, nisi per ideas afFec- 
tionum quibus corpus afficitur." — (Prop, xxiii.) — " Mens se ipsam non cog- 
noscit, nisi quatenus corporis affectionum ideas percipit." Et alibi. — (See 
Bruno, n. 12.) 

16. — Sir Isaac Newton. (Principia, Schol. Ult.) — "Quid sit rei ali- 
cujus substantia, minime cognoscimus. Videmus tantum corporum figuras 
et colores, audimus tantum sonos, tangimus tantum superficies externas, 

1 Had Bruno adhered to this doctrine, he would have missed martyrdom as an athe- 
ist ; but figuring to posterity, neither as a great fool (if we believe Adelung) nor as 
a great philosopher (if we believe Schelling). Compare the parallel testimony of Spi- 
noza (15) a fellow Pantheist, but on different grounds. 



500 APPENDIX I. PHILOSOPHICAL. (B.) 

olfacimus odores solos, et gustamus sapores : intimas substantias nullo 
sensu, nulla actione reflexa, cognosciraus." 

17. — Kant. (Critik der reinen Vernunft, Vorr.) — " In perception every 
thing is known in conformity to the constitution of our faculty." And a 
hundred testimonies to the same truth might be adduced from the philoso 
pher of Koenigsherg, of whose doctrine it is, in fact, the foundation. 

III. — The recognition of Occult Causes. 

This is the admission, that there are phenomena which, thougn 
unable to refer to any known cause or class, it would imply an 
irrational ignorance to deny. This general proposition no one, 
I presume, will be found to gainsay ; for, in fact, the causes of all 
phenomena are, at last, occult. There has, however, obtained a 
not unnatural presumption against such causes ; and this pre- 
sumption, though often salutary, has sometimes operated most 
disadvantageously to science, from a blind and indiscriminate 
application ; in two ways. In the first place, it has induced men 
lightly to admit asserted phenomena, false in themselves, if only 
confidently assigned to acknowledged causes. In the second place, 
it has induced them obstinately to disbelieve phenomena, in them- 
selves certain and even manifest, if these could not at once be re- 
ferred to already recognized causes, and did not easily fall in with 
the systems prevalent at the time. — An example of the former, is 
seen in the facile credence popularly accorded, in this country, to 
the asserted facts of Craniology ; though even the fact of that 
hypothesis, first and fundamental — the fact, most probable in it- 
self, and which can most easily be proved or disproved by the 
widest and most accurate induction, is diametrically opposite to 
the truth of nature ; I mean the asserted correspondence between 
the development and hypothetical function of the cerebellum, as 
manifested in all animals, under the various differences of age, of 
sex, of season, of integrity and mutilation. This (among other 
of the pertinaciously asserted facts), I know by a tenfold super- 
fluous evidence, to be even ludicrously false. — An example of the 
latter, is seen in the difficult credence accorded in this country to 
the phenomena of Animal Magnetism; phenomena in themselves 
the most unambiguous, which, for nearly half a century, have 
been recognized generally and by the highest scientific authorities 
in Germany ; while, for nearly a quarter of a century, they have 
been verified and formally confirmed by the Academy of Medicine 
in France. — In either case, criticism was required, and awanting. 

So true is the saying of Cullen : — " There are more false facts 



OCCULT CAUSES. 601 

current in the world than false theories." So true is the saying 
of Hamlet : — " There are more things in heaven and earth, Hora- 
tio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." But averse from 
experiment, and gregariously credulous — 

" L'homme est de glace aux verites ; 
II est de feu pour les mensonges." 

1. — Julius Cesar Scaliger.. 1 In his commentary on Theophrastus 
touching the Causes of Plants, he repeatedly asserts, as the Aristotelic doc- 
trine, the admission of Occult Causes. Thus, (L. ii. c. 5) — " Hoc dixit 
(Theophrastus), nequis ab eo nunc exigat occultas illarum, quas subtieet, 
causas. Quasi dicat — Sapienti multa licet ignorare." In like manner, 
{L. iv. c. 13.) — " Hunc quoque locum simul cum aliis adducere potes ad- 
versus eos qui negant Peripateticis ab occulta proprietate quicquam fieri. 
Apud hunc philosophum ssepe monuimus inveniri. Est autem asylum 
humanse imbecillitatis, ac simile perfugium illi Periclis — elg ra deovra." 
This we may translate — "Secret service money." — The same he had also 
previously declared in his book De Subtilitate ; where, for example (Ex. 
ccxviii, § 8), he says : — " Ad manifestas omnia deducere qualitates summa 
impudentia est ;" for there are many of these, " quse omnino latent animos 
temperatos, illudunt curiosis ;" and he derides those, " qui irrident salutare 
asylum illud, occultse proprietatis." 

2. — Alstedius. (Physica (1630), Pars. I. c. xiii. reg. 4.) — " Gluod 
Augustinus ait, ' Multa cognoscendo ignorari, et ignorando, cognosci,' hie 
imprimis habet locum, ubi agitur de Occultis Q,ualitatibus, quaram investi- 
gatio dicitur Magia JSTaturalis, id est, prsestantissima naturae indagatio 
in qua verbum modestise, Nescio, subinde usurpandum est. Verbum 
modestise dico, non autem stultitise." 

3. — Voltaire. (Dictionnaire Philosophique, voce Occultes.) — " Gtualites 
Occultes. — On s'est moque fort Iongtemps des qualites occultes ; on doit se 
moquer de ceux qui n'y croient pas. Hepetons cent fois, que tout principe, 
tout premier ressort de quelque ceuvre que ce puisse etre du grand Demi- 
ourgos, est occulte et cache pour jamais aux mortels." And so forth. — 
(Physique Particuliere, ch. xxxiii.) — "II y a done certainement des lois 
eternelles, inconnues, suivant lesquelles tout s'opere, sans qu'on puisse les 

expliquer par la matiere et par le mouvement. II y a dans toutes 

les Academies une chaire vacante pour les verites inconnues, comme 
Athenes avait un autel pour les dieux ignores." 2 

1 I have quoted the elder Scaliger, under all the three heads of this article, for a 
truth in his language is always acutely and strikingly enounced. The writings of no 
philosopher, indeed, since those of Aristotle, are better worthy of intelligent study ; 
and few services to philosophy would be greater than a systematic collection and 
selection of the enduring and general views of this illustrious thinker. For, to apply 
to him his own expressions, these " zopyra," these " semina aeternitatis," lie smothered 
•and unfruitful in a mass of matters of merely personal and transitory interest. I had 
hoped to have attempted this in the appendix to a work "De vita, genere et genio 
Scaligerorum ;" but this I hope no longer. 

3 Besides the few testimonies adduced, I would refer, in general, for some excellent 
observations on the point, to Fernelius " De Abditis Rerum Causis," and to the 
" Hypomnemata" of Sennertus. 



APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. 

(A.) OF SYLLOGISM, ITS KINDS, CANONS, NOTATIONS, ETC. 

Touching the principle of an explicitly Quantified Predicate, 
I had by 1833 become convinced of the necessity to extend and 
correct the logical doctrine upon this point. In the article on 
Logic, reprinted above, and first published in April, 1833, the 
theory of Induction there maintained proceeds on a thorough-going 
quantification of the predicate, in affirmative propositions. (P. 
160, sq.) 

Before 1840, I had, however, become convinced, that it was 
necessary to extend the principle equally to negatives ; for I find 
by academical documents, that in that year, at latest, I had pub- 
licly taught the unexclusive doctrine. 

The following is an extract from the "Prospectus of Essay 
toward a new Analytic of Logical Forms," appended to the edi- 
tion of Reid's Works, published by me in 1846 

" In X\ie first place, in the Essay there will be shown, that the Syllogism 
proceeds, not as has hitherto, virtually at least, been taught, in one, but in 
the tivo correlative and counter ivholes (Metaphysical) of Comprehension 
and (Logical) of Extension; — the major premise in the one whole, being 
the minor premise in the other, &c. — Thus is relieved, a radical defect 
and vital inconsistency in the present logical system. 

In the second place, the self-evident truth — That we can only rationally 
deal with what we already understand, determines the simple logical pos- 
tulate — To state explicitly tvhat is thought implicitly. From the con- 
sistent application of this postulate, on which Logic ever insists, but 
which Logicians have never fairly obeyed, it follows : — that, logically, we 
ought to take into account the quantity, always understood in thought, 
but usually, and for manifest reasons, elided in its expression, not only of 
the subject, but also of the predicate, of a judgment. This being done, 
and the necessity of doing it, will be proved against Aristotle and his re- 
peaters, we obtain, inter alia, the ensuing results : 

1°, That the preindesignate terms of a proposition, whether subject or 
predicate, are never, on that account, thought as iyidefinite (or indeterm- 
inate) in quantity. The only indefinite, is particular, as opposed to 
definite, quantity ; and this last, as it is either of an extensive maximum 
undivided, or of an extensive minimum indivisible, constitutes quantity 
universal (general), and quantity singular (individual.) In fact, definite 
and indefinite are the only quantities of which we ought to hear in Logic ; 



NEW ANALYTIC OF LOGICAL FORMS. 603 

for it is only as indefinite that particular, it is only as definite that indi- 
vidual and general, quantities have any (and the same) logical avail. 

2°, The revocation of the two Terms of a Proposition to their true re- 
lation; a proposition being always an equation of its subject and its pre- 
dicate. 

3°, The consequent reduction of the Conversion of Propositions ; from 
three species to one — that of Simple Conversion. 

4°, The reduction of all the General Laws of Categorical Syllogisms 
to a Single Canon. 

5°, The evolution from that one canon of all the Species and varieties 
of Syllogism. 

6°, The abrogation of all the Special Laws of Syllogism. 

7°, A demonstration of the exclusive possibility of Three syllogistic 
Figures ; and (on new grounds) the scientific and final abolition of the 
Fourth. 

8°, A manifestation that Figure is an unessential variation in syllo- 
gistic form ; and the consequent absurdity of Reducing the syllogisms of 
the other figures to the first. 

9°, An enouncement oi one Organic Principle for each Figure. 

10°, A determination of the true number of the legitimate Moods; 
with 

11°, Their amplification in number; 

12°, Their numerical equality under all the figures ; and, 

13°, Their relative equivalence, or virtual identity, throughout every 
schematic difference. 

14°, That, in the second and third figures, the extremes, holding both 
the same relation to the middle term, there is not, as in the first, an op- 
position and subordination between a term major and a term minor, mu- 
tually containing and contained, in the counter wholes of Extension and 
Comprehension. 

15°, Consequently, in the second and third figures, there is no determ- 
inate major and minor premise, and there are two indifferent conclu- 
sions ; whereas, in the first, the premises are determinate, and there is a 
single proximate conclusion. 

16°, That the third, as the figure in which Comprehension is predom- 
inant, is more appropriate to Induction. 

17°, That the second, as the figure in which Extension is predominant, 
is more appropriate to Deduction. 

18°, That the first, as the figure in which Comprehension and Ex- 
tension are in equilibrium, is common to Induction and Deduction in- 
differently." 

"What follows was subjoined, as a Note, to the " Essay on the 
New Analytic of Logical Forms," by Mr. Thomas Spencer Baynes, 
which obtained the prize proposed in 1846, but was only pub- 
lished in 1850. The foot-notes are now added. 

" The ensuing note contains a summary of my more matured doctrine 
of the Syllogism, in so far as it is relative to the preceding Essay. 

All mediate inference is one — that incorrectly called Categorical ; for 
the Conjunctive and Disjunctive forms of Hypothetical reasoning are 
reducible to immediate inferences. 



604 APPENDIX II. OF SYLLOGISM. (A.) 

Montally one, the Categorical Syllogism, according to its order of 
enouncement, is either Analytic (A) or Synthetic (ft). Analytic, if (what 
is inappropriately styled) the conclusion be expressed first, and (what are 
inappropriately styled) the premises he then stated as its reasons. Syn- 
thetic, if the premises precede, and, as it were, effectuate the conclusion. 1 
These general forms of the syllogism can with ease be distinguished by a 
competent notation ; and every special variety in the one has its corre- 
sponding variety in the other. 

Taking the syllogism under the latter form (B) (which, though perhaps 
less natural, 2 has been alone cultivated by logicians, and to which, there- 
fore, exclusively all logical nomenclature is relative) — the syllogism is 
again divided into the Unfigured (a) and the Figured (b). 

The Unfigured Syllogism (a) is that in which the terms compared do 
not stand to each other in the reciprocal relation of subject and predicate, 
being in the same proposition, either both subjects or both predicates. 3 
Here the dependency of Breadth and Depth (Extension and Intension, 
Extension and Comprehension, &c), does not subsist, and the order, ac- 
cordingly, of the premises is wholly arbitrary. This form has been over- 
looked by the logicians, though equally worthy of development as any 
other ; in fact, it affords a key to the whole mystery of Syllogism. And 

1 [This, in the first place, relieves the syllogism of two one-sided views. The Aris- 
totelic syllogism is exclusively synthetic ; the Epicurean (or Neoclesian) syllogism 
was — for it has been long forgotten — exclusively analytic ; while the Hindoo syllo- 
gism is merely a clumsy agglutination of these counter-forms, being nothing but an 
operose repetition of the same reasoning, enounced, 1°, analytically, 2°, synthetically. 
In thought, the syllogism is organically one ; and it is only stated in an analytic or 
synthetic form, from the necessity of adopting the one order or the other, in accom- 
modation to the vehicle of its expression — Language. For the conditions of lan- 
guage require, that a reasoning be distinguished into parts, and these detailed before 
and after other. The analytic and synthetic orders of enouncement are, thus, only 
accidents of the syllogistic process. This is, indeed, shown in practice ; for our best 
reasonings proceed indifferently in either order. 

In the second place, this central view vindicates the Syllogism from the objection of 
Petitio Principii, which professing logically to annul logic, or at least to reduce it to 
an idle tautology, defines syllogistic — the art of avowing in the conclusion what has 
been already confessed in the premises. This objection (which has at least an anti- 
quity of three centuries and a half) is only applicable to the synthetic or Aristotelic 
order of enouncement, which the objectors, indeed, contemplate as alone possible. It 
does not hold against the analytic syllogism ; it does not hold against the syllogism 
considered aloof from the accident of its expression ; and being proved irrelevant to 
these, it is easily shown in reference to the synthetic syllogism itself, that it applies 
only to an accident of its external form.] 

2 [I say less natural. For if it be asked — "Is C in A v ' surely it is more natural 
to reply — Yes (or G is in A), for C is in B, and B in A (or, for B is in A, and C in B) ; 
than to reply — B is in A, and C in B (or, C is in B, and B in A), therefore, C is in A. 

In point of fact, the analytic syllogism is not only the more natural, it is even pre- 
supposed by the synthetic. To express in words, we must first analyze in thought 
the organic whole — the mental simultaneity of a simple reasoning ; and then, we may 
reverse in thought the process, by a synthetic return. Further, we may now enounce 
the reasoning in either order ; but, certainly, to express it in the essential, primary, 
or analytic order, is not only more natural, but more direct and simple, than to ex- 
press it in the accidental, secondary, or synthetic. This also avoids the objection of 
P. P.] 

3 [As : Convertible (identical, 4c.) are: All C, and some B : as also all B and all 
A : therefore all C and some A. — This may be variously stated.] 



NEW ANALYTIC OF LOGICAL FORMS. 605 

what is curious, the Canon by which this syllogism is regulated (what 
may be called that of logical Analogy or Proportion), has, fort above five 
centuries, been commonly stated as the one principle of reasoning, while 
the form of reasoning itself, to which it properly applies, has never been 
generalized. This Canon, which has been often erroneously, and never 
adequately enounced, in rules four, three, two, or one, is as follows : — In 
as far as two notions (notions proper or individuals), either both agree, or 
one agreeing, the other does not, xvith a common third notion ; in so far, 
these notions do or do not agree ivith each other. — The propositions of 
this syllogism in no-figure are marked in the scheme of pure logical nota- 
tion by horizontal lines of uniform breadth. 

In the Figured Syllogism (b), the terms compared are severally subject 
and predicate, consequently, in reference to each other, containing and 
contained in the counter wholes of Intension and Extension. Its Canon 
is : — What ivorse relation of subject and predicate subsists between either 
of tico terms and a common third term, with ivhich one, at least, is pos- 
itively related; that relation subsists between the two terms themselves. — 
In the scheme of pure logical notation a horizontal tapering line maiks 
this relation ; the subject standing at the broad, the predicate at the 
pointed end. 

There are three, and only three, Figures — the same as those of Aris- 
totle ; and in each of these we may distinguish the orders of Breadth and 
of Depth. 

The First Figure emerges, when the middle term is subject of the one 
extreme and predicate of the other ; that is, when we pass from the one 
extreme to the other, through the middle, in the order whether of Exten- 
sion or of Intension. In the notation of this Figure, we may of course 
arbitrarily make either of these orders to proceed from left to right, or 
from right to left ; that is, two arrangements are competent. — There is 
here, determinately, one direct and one indirect conclusion. 

The Second Figure arises, when the middle term is the predicate of 
both extremes ; the order of Breadth proceeding from middle to extremes, 
the order of Depth from extremes to middle. 

The Third Figure is determined, when the middle term is the subject 
of both extremes ; the order of Extension proceeding from extremes to 
middle, the order of Intension from middle to extremes. 

In the Second and Third Figures there is thus only one arrangement 
possible in logical notation. And as Extension and Intension are here in 
equilibrium, there is no definite major and minor premise, and conse- 
quently no indirect, but two indifferent conclusions. This is best marked 
by two crossing lines under the premises, each marking the extreme 
standing to the other as subject or as predicate. 

Of course each Figure has its own Canon, but these it is not here re- 
quisite to state. 1 The First Figure, besides its more general canon, has 

1 [The several Canons for the several Figures may, however, now be given. They 
are : for the 

First Figure. — What worse relation of determining (predicate), and of determined 
' (subject), is held by either of two notions to a third, with which" one at least is posi- 
tively related ; — that relation do they immediately (directly) hold to each other, and 
indirectly (mediately) its converse." 

Second Figure. — " What worse relation of determined (subject), is held by either 



606 APPENDIX II. OF SYLLOGISM. (A.) 

also two more special — one for Syllogisms in the order of Extension, ana 
one for Syllogisms in the order of Intension. And what is remarkable, 
Aristotle's Dictum de Omni, &c. (in the Prior Analytics), gives that for 
Extension, while his rule — Prcedicatum prozdicati, &c. (in the Cate- 
gories), affords that for Intension, although this last order of Syllogism 
was not developed by him or the logicians ; — both, however, are inade- 
quately stated. 

In regard to the notation of Quality and Qua?itity, and in the syllo- 
gisms both Unfigured and Figured. — Negation is marked by a perpen- 
dicular line, which may be applied to the copula, to the term, or to the 
quantification. — As to Quantity (for there are subordinate distinctions), it 
is sufficient here to state, that there is denoted by the sign [ , or ' ] (for 
the quantity of one term ought to face the other), some; — by the sign [ : ], 
all; — by the sign [ . ], a half ; — by the sign [ '. or i ], more than a half 
The last two are only of use to mark the ultra-total distribution of the 
middle term of a syllogism, between both the premises, as affording a cer- 
tain inference, valid, but of little utility. This I once thought had been 
first generalized by me, but I have since found it fully stated and fairly 
appreciated by Lambert, 1 to say nothing of Frommichen. 

Above (p. 76 [of Mr. Baynes's Essay]) is a detail of my pure logical 
notation, as applicable to the thirty-six moods of the first figure. The 
order there is not, however, that which I have adopted. The following 
is my final arrangement, and within brackets is its correspondence with 
the numbers of that given above : — The moods are either A) Balanced, 
or B) Unbalanced. In the former class both terms and propositions are 
balanced, and it contains two moods — i ; ii, [— i ; if] In the latter class 
there are two subdivisions. For either, a) the terms are unbalanced — iii, 
iv, [=xi, xii] ; or, b) both the terms and propositions are unbalanced — 
v, vi ; vii, viii ; ix, x ; xi, xii, [=vii, viii ; iii, iv ; v, vi ; ix, x.] The 
following equation applies to my table of moods given in Mr. Thom- 
son's Laws of Thought : — i; ii ; xi, xii; vii, viii; iii, iv; v, vi; ix, x. — 
The present arrangement is also more minutely determined by another 
principle, but this it is not here requisite to state. 

If we apply the moods to any matter however abstract, say letters, 
there will emerge forty-two syllogisms ; for the formal identity of the 
balanced moods will then be distinguished by a material difference. On 
the contrary, if we regard the mere formal equivalence of the moods, these 
will be reduced to tiventy-one reasonings — seven affirmative and fourteen 
negative. Of the balanced moods, i and ii are converted each into itself; 
of the unbalanced, every odd, and the even number immediately follow- 
ing, are convertible ; and in negatives, the first and second moods (a, b) 
of the corresponding syzygy or jugation, is reduced from or to the second 
and first moods (b, a) of its reciprocal. 

There are no exceptions. The Canon is thorough-going. Only it must 
be observed : 1°, that the doctrine is wrong which teaches, that a uni- 

of two notions to a third, with which one at least is positively related ; — that relation 
do they hold indifferently to each other." 

Third Figure. — " What worse relation of determining (predicate), is held by either 
of two notions to a third, with which one at least is positively related ; — that relation 
do they hold indifferently to each other."] 

1 [On the use which has been made in this country of the logical speculations of 
Lambert and Ploucquet, it would be out of place here to say any thing.] 



NEW ANALYTIC OF LOGICAL FORMS. 



607 



versal negation is not a worse relation than a particular; 2°, that the 
connection of a negative with an affirmative mood, is regulated exclusively 
by the identity in quantity of their syzygy or antecedents. The Greeks, 
in looking to the conjugation of the premises alone, are more accurate 
than the Latins, who regard all the three propositions of a syllogism in 
the determination of a mood. 

It is not to be forgotten, that as the correlation of the logical terms 
ought to be known only from the expression (ex facie propositionis aut 
syllogismi), for all other knowledge of the reciprocal dependence of notions 
is contingent, material, and extralogical ; and as the employment of let- 
ters, following upon each other in alphabetical order, may naturally sug- 
gest a corresponding subordination in the concepts which they denote : I 
have adopted the signs C and T, which are each the third letter in its 
respective alphabet, for the extremes ; and the sign M, for the middle term 
of the syllogism. The scheme is thus emancipated from all external as- 
sociations, and otherwise left free in application. I also transpose the 
former symbols in the interconvertible moods ; so that whereas in the one 
stand C M T, in the other stand rMC." 1 

The notation previously spoken of, represents every various 
syllogism in all the accidents of its external form. But as the 
number of Moods in syllogisms Analytic and Synthetic, Intensive 
and Extensive, Unfigured and Figured (and of this in all the 
figures), are the same; and as a reasoning, essentially identical, 
may be carried through the same numerical mood, in every genus 
and species of syllogism : — it seems, as we should wish it, that 
there must be possible also, a notation precisely manifesting the 
modal process, in all its essential differences, hut, at the same 
time, in its internal identity, abstract from every accidental va- 
riety of external form. The anticipation and wish are realized ; 
and realized with the utmost clearness and simplicity, in a nota- 



[The following Table is, in part, an epitome of the preceding Note : 



Immediate ; 

of which some 

kinds are 



r 



Recognized, 

as Propositional 

(Various.) 



Not recognized, 
as Syllogistic. 



Disjunctive. ~\ 



( Conjunctive. 



Hypo- 
thetical. 



03 V 



Mediate ; 
Syllogism Proper, \ 
(Categorical.) 



Analytic. ) 
I 

I 
.Synthetic. J 



f Unfigured. 



Figured, 
(Intensive 
or Exten- 
sive) in 



F. I. 



{ F. II. 



F. III. 



608 APPENDIX II. OF SYLLOGISM. (A.) 

tion which fulfills, and alone fulfills these conditions. This no- 
tation I have long employed ; and the two following are speci- 
mens. Herein, four common lines are all the requisites : three 
(horizontal) to denote the terms; one (two? — perpendicular) or 
the want of it, at the commencement of comparison, to express 
the quality of affirmation or negation ; while quantity is marked 
by the relative length of a terminal line within, and its indefinite 
excurrence before, the limit of comparison. This notation can 
represent equally total and ultra-total distribution, in simple syl- 
logism and sorites ; it shows, at a glance, the competence or in- 
competence of any conclusion ; and every one can easily evolve it. 
C > C 1 



M 

r 



M 

r 



Of these : the former, with its converse, includes, Darii, Dabi- 
tis, Datisi, Disarms, Dimatis, &c. ; while the latter, with its con- 
verse, includes Celarent, Cesare, Celantes, Camestres, Camenes, 
&c. But of these, those which are represented by the same dia- 
gram are, though in different figures, formally, the same mood. 
For in this scheme, each of the thirty-six moods has its peculiar 
diagram ; whereas, in all the other geometrical schemes, hitherto 
proposed (whether by lines, angles, triangles, squares, parallelo- 
grams, or circles), the same (complex) diagram is necessarily 
employed, to represent an indefinite plurality of moods. These 
schemes thus tend, rather to complicate, than to explicate — rather 
to darken than to clear up. — The principle of this notation may 
be realized in various forms. 



APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. 

(B.) ON AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION— ON PREPOSITION- 
AL FORMS— ON BREADTH AND DEPTH— ON SYLLOGISTIC, 
AND SYLLOGISTIC NOTATION, &c. 

The present article consists of observations made in reference 
to a memoir by Professor de Morgan, entitled, " On the Symbols 
of Logic, the Theory of the Syllogism," &c, read, in February, 
1850, to the Cambridge Philosophical Society, and published in 
their Transactions (vol. ix.) The author (with whom I had pre- 
viously been involved in a logical discussion, more, however, of 
personal than of scientific concernment), politely transmitted to 
me a copy of this paper, during the following summer ; and the 
character of its contents induced me, forthwith, to address the 
following letter to the Editor of the Athenaeum. This letter, I 
was compelled to limit to a single point, in consequence of the 
others leading me into a field of argument too extensive : but, as 
I now find that my observations upon these were more fully writ- 
ten out than I had recollected- — as the unexclusive controversy 
involves some questions of scientific novelty — and tends withal 
to show of what value are the mathematical improvements of 
Logic, now proposed ; on second thoughts, I here append the 
whole discussion, with a few verbal amplifications, and two sup- 
plementary notes. I regret, indeed, that the necessity of vindi- 
cating what, to me, is the cause of truth, should have given to 
these comments a character so controversial ; constraining me to 
combat, from first to last, the logical speculations of one who 
ranks deservedly among the highest of our British Mathemati- 
cians. In fact, if I be not radically wrong, with the exception of 
two doctrines — which are themselves, indeed, only borrowed — 
there is not, in the whole compass of Mr. de Morgan's " Logical 
Systems," a single logical novelty which is not a logical blunder. 
Of other errors, I say nothing. This, Mr. de Morgan himself has 
not only warranted, but called on, me to show. For, though 
casting no blame on the aggressive purport of his paper, it will, 
at least, be allowed, that the attack is from too respectable a 



610 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. (B). 

quarter not, on my part, to justify — even, perhaps, to necessitate, 
a defense : and blame, assuredly, I cast neither on Professor de 
Morgan nor on the Philosophical 1 Society of Cambridge ; for the 
love of truth is always, of itself, polemical (" iToXeyu.09 airavroiv, 
koI Trj<i 'AXrjdeias, TraTrjp") ; while reason and experience concur 
in showing, that Mathematics and Logic, like Love and Majesty — 

" Haud bene conveniunt, nee in una sede morantur." 

But it comes to this : — If, as has been said, Mr. de Morgan's 
Memoir may represent the Transactions, the Transactions the 
Society, and the Society the University of Cambridge, then, either 
is the knowledge of Logic — even of " Logic not its own" — in that 
seminary now absolutely null, or I am publicly found ignorant 
of the very alphabet of the science I profess. The alternative I 
am unable to disown ; the decision I care not to avoid ; and the 
discussion, I hope, may have its uses. 

Edinburgh, 1th August, 1850. 

Sir — May I request the favor of being permitted, through your 
journal, to say a few words on a somewhat abstract subject, and 
in answer to Professor de Morgan's paper " On the Symbols of 
Logic," &c, in the volume of the " Transactions of the Philoso- 
phical Society of Cambridge," which has just appeared. [Wrong; 
the volume was not then published.] With that gentleman's 
logical theories, in general, I should not have thought of inter- 
fering ; and even his errors concerning my own doctrines I would 
have willingly left to refute themselves. Not that I entertain a 
low opinion of Mr. de Morgan's talent. In so far as I am quali- 
fied to judge, he well deserves the high reputation as a mathema- 
tician which he enjoys. But as a writer on the theory of reason- 
ing, I can not think that he has done his talent justice. I am 
persuaded, indeed, that had he studied mathematics as he has 
studied logic, and were the members of the " Cambridge Philoso- 
phical Society" as competent judges in the one science as in the 
other — his character as a mathematician would rank very differ- 
ently from what it does, nor would their " Transactions" have 



1 The Philosophical Society of Cambridge ought not, however, to be so entitled, 
if we take the word Philosophy in the meaning attached to it every where out of 
Britain. — (See above, p. 272.) I may add, as another example, that the recent edition, 
by the learned Erdmann, of the " Opera Philosophica" of Leibnitz, precisely omits, 
as non-philosophical, the matters which in Cambridge are styled philosophy ; — to wit, 
Physics and Mathematics. Philosophy is not, however, formally excluded from the 
" Philosophical Society of Cambridge," as it is from the " Philosophical Society of 
London." Mr. de Morgan's paper is an example. 



AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION. 611 

introduced his logical speculations to the world. It is because 
Mr. de Morgan has not merely erred himself, but put into my 
mouth his own rudimentary mistakes ; and because, so far from 
these mistakes being detected when his paper was read and dis- 
cussed, that paper has been deemed by the Philosophical Society 
a contribution worthy of publication as a part of its proceedings : 
— these special causes now principally constrain me to a brief 
exposition of the unintentional misrepresentations. 

The present comments relate exclusively to Mr. de Morgan's 
strictures on my abstract notation of syllogistic forms, a specimen 
of which has been published by Mr. Thomson in his " Laws of 
Thought." But though that fragment contain only affirmations, 
and of these only the naked symbols, Mr. de Morgan excogitating 
the negative forms, translates them into concrete language, ac- 
cording to his conception of what they ought to express ; and then, 
without a word of explanation makes me their author. — Farther : 
Finding that these expressions, as those which he attributes to 
logicians in general, are repugnant to " common thought," to 
" common language" — he might have fairly added, and to com- 
mon sense, he has swelled a memoir of more than fifty quarto 
pages with objections to Aristotle's doctrine and to mine ; but 
radically misapprehending both, the illustration of his errors, at 
once dispels the objections themselves, and therewith the two 
novel " Systems" reared on the same imaginary foundation. 

Mr. de Morgan says : 

" The following phrase of Sir William Hamilton's system, ' All A is 
not some B' [!] is very forced, both in order and phraseology ; one who 
sees it for the first time finds it hard to make English or sense of it. The 
meaning is, 'Each A is not any one among certain of the B's,' [!] and 
in its place in the system alluded to, the uncouth expression helps to pro- 
duce system, and the perception of uniform laws of inference." — (P. 5.) 
And again : " The logician, who must have forms, has to make a choice, 
and he has invented cumular expressions which do not suit the genius 
of common thought or common language. 'All man is not fish' [!] is 
the form in which a logician denies that any man is a fish. Sir William 
Hamilton says, 'All man is not all fish.' [!] Common language would 
deny the first by saying, 'No, nor any fart of him.' Even 'All men are 
not fislies' only means, in common language, 'some men are not fishes,' 
with emphasis upon the great number that are implied to be so ; and 
would therefore be held false. The predicate of a negative must be ex- 
emplar : it is, 'Every man is not any one fish.' [!] The examination of 
the following table will show that there is much less forcing of common 
expression in a list of nothing but exemplars than in a list of nothing but 
cumulars." [!]— (P. 24.) 



612 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. (B.) 

This attribution of certain phrases for certain forms of predica- 
tion to the logicians and to me, is a mere imagination of Mr. de 
Morgan. I admit, that had we thus spoken, we had spoken, not 
only ungrammatically, but nonsensically. This, however, we 
have not done ; and Mr. de Morgan's imagination of the fact, is 
the result of a strange oversight on his part of the commonest 
principle and practice of common logic and of common language. 
For language is logical in its forms ; and a logic which can not 
be unambiguously expressed in language, is no logic at all. 
Logic, Language, and Common Sense are never at variance. Mr. 
de Morgan, I say, curiously misunderstands the nature — the con- 
trast of Affirmation and Negation, and the counter expressions in 
which that contrast is embodied by language. I regret to tarry 
for a moment on a point so elementary ; but, as the mistake is 
of that very point, it is necessary to state, what I feel it irksome 
not to suppose known — at least instinctively. Known, however, 
scientifically it often is not ; and as the principle has never been 
developed, I may, at once, correct Mr. de Morgan, and explain it. 

Mr. de Morgan's error is twofold ; and of these again each is 
compound. 

1°. He thinks, that in universal negation, the logicians employ 
the predesignation " all," — which they do not ; and do not em- 
ploy the predesignation "any" — which they regularly do. On 
this complex reversal of the fact, he fancies an obnoxious " Sys- 
tem" — wars strenuously against this hostile phantom — fathers it 
on others — and finally adjudges it to righteous condemnation, by 
the style of " Cumular." 

2°. He thinks, that the predesignation "all" can be superseded, 
and the predesignation " any" applied to universal affirmation ; — 
both erroneously. From the conjunction of these two impossi- 
bilities, the new-born " System" is engendered, which he fosters 
as his own, and fondly baptizes by the name of " Exemplar." — 
But these errors must be further explained. 

To speak, then, of Affirmation and Negation. 

In result. — Affirmation is inclusion, and universal affirmation, 
absolute inclusion — the inclusion of a definite this or all (indivi- 
dual or class) ; Negation is exclusion, and universal negation, 
absolute exclusion — the exclusion of a definite this or all (indivi- 
dual or class). (Laying individuals aside) : 

In process. — Affirmation proceeds downward or inward, from 
greatest to least, from the constituted whole to the constituent 



AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION. 613 

parts ; Negation, upward or outward, from least to greatest, from 
the constituent parts to the constituted whole. 

The counter qualities are also contrasted, in and as the two 
counter quantities. — In proportion : — to Depth or intension, is af- 
firmation ; to Breadth or extension, is negation. — At the maximum 
of Breadth, there is predicated : — by Affirmation, the least of the 
most, (that is, there is given the fewest attributes to the greatest 
number of things) ; — by Negation, the most of the least (that is, 
there is withdrawn the greatest number of attributes from the 
fewest things). Hence : — To posit the Genus, is not to posit the 
Species and Individual ; but to sublate the Grenus, is to sublate 
the Species and Individual. — At the maximum of Depth, there is 
predicated :— by Affirmation, the most of the least, (that is, there 
is given the greatest number of attributes to the fewest things); 
— by Negation, the least of the most (that, is, there is withdrawn 
the fewest attributes from the greatest number of things). Hence : 
— To posit the Individual, is to posit the Species and Genus ; 
but to sublate the Individual, is not to sublate the Species and 
Genus.— [See Table, p. 631.] 

Now, from the higher view of an abstract or scientific Notation, 
which regards and states only the result ; Negation appears as a 
positive and irrespective act— am act of exclusion. Here, all the 
signs of affirmative and negative quantity are the same ; what is 
absolutely included or excluded is all. 

On the contrary, from the lower view of concrete or common 
Language, which is conversant about the process, Negation 
(what its name expresses) shows only as a privative and correla- 
tive act — as the undoing, as the reversal of inclusion or affirma- 
tion. Here the predesignatory words for universally affirmative 
and universally negative quantity are not the same. In ordinary 
speech we say :- — for absolute affirmation, all is, &c. ; for absolute 
negation, not any (or none) is, &c. ; thus accomplishing the exclu- 
sion o/all through the non-inclusion of any. To use, in common 
language, the same verbal predesignation of quantity for an af- 
firmative, as for a negative, universal, would be, in fact, to do 
nearly the opposite of what is intended to be done. Every 
logician knows explicitly, as every unlearned man knows implic- 
itly, that naturally, and in common language, the negation of a 
universal affirmative predesignation yields only a particular nega- 
tive, as the negation of a universal negative predesignation yields 
only a particular affirmative. The logician therefore, to desig- 



614 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL (B.) 

nate a Universal Affirmative, familiarly uses "all is" " all are ;" 
the " all" (7ra9, iravres, omnis, omnes, &c.) containing under it, 
and therefore meaning — sometimes collectively, "whole," &c. (0X09, 
oKol a-iras, cnravres, avyuiva^ au/jL7ravTe<i, totus, toti, cunctus, cuncti, 
universus, universi, &c.) — sometimes distributively, " every," 
"each" " each several" &c. (iras 7-49 efcaaros, eKacnos Ti9, 7ra9 
efcaaTOs, Travres eKaaroi, oariaovv, 7ra9 ocru?, Trdvres ocroi, quisque, 
unusquisque, singulusquisque, &c): and for a Universal Negative, 
(eschewing "all is not" as at best ambiguous), he employs "no 
or none (not one) is" " not any is" " any is not" <Stc. (ovSels, 
fivSeU ecrri, nullus, ullus non, non or ne aliquis, non quisquam, 
non quispiam est, &c.) To quote my version of the "Asserit 
A," &c, a version with which Mr. de Morgan may be ac- 
quainted : 

" A, it affirms of this, these, all, 
While E denies of any," &c. 
In this, common logic and common language (from which last 
many curious illustrations might be given) are at one. As a 
single example : — the Latin ullus (a word in which that tongue 
is, in this instance, richer than the Greek, which has nothing, at 
least, better, than the ambiguous -rk), affords a beautiful illustra- 
tion. Ullus (unulus), any, ullus. non, nullus (non or ne ullus, 
ouSeh, firjSeh), not any, none ; nonnullus (non nullus), not none, 
some ; nullus non, none not, all. So nemo, (ne homo) ; non nemo ; 
and nemo non. So nihil, (ne hilum); non nihil ; and nihil non. 
Nor need there be an end of instances in any language. The 
Hebrew is, in fact, so far as I am aware, the only tongue which 
does not always discriminate unambiguously, and by verbal con- 
trast, the affirmative from the negative universal, though one 
tongue may certainly do this more deftly than another. 

Now, the predesignation of universal negation, which Mr. de 
Morgan marvelously makes " the logician" to employ, nay even 
to have " invented" for himself, as a technical expression — this 
predesignation, (in his example — " All man is not fish," in mine 
— " All men are not blackamores,") is in logical, as in ordinary, 
language, not a universal at all, but a particular negative — a 
mere denial of omnitude — tantamount, therefore, it should be, to 
a particular affirmative. Ov 7ra<; eari is, indeed, the common 
expression of Aristotle and the Grreek logicians for "some is not." 
[" Some is" should, however, have been held its direct and natural 
result ; for, as we shall see, two particulars in the affirmative and 



AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION. 815 

negative forms, ought to infer each other. Compare p. 623, sq.] 
—If Mr. de Morgan, therefore, can name (as I know may be 
done) any writer on logic who employs the expressions thus 
attributed to all logicians, Mr. de Morgan is heartily welcome to 
treat the blunderer as he may deem his ignorance to deserve. — 
So much for " the logician." 

As for myself: — The language I use is that of the logicians; 
only the quantity of the predicate, contained in thought, is overtly 
expressed, whereas, in common language, followed by common 
logic, that quantity is, though never null, usually, merely under- 
stood. Therefore, reversing the expression of " the logician," 
Mr. de Morgan naturally reverses mine ; but the distorted non- 
sense which he lays to my account is, I am assured, only what 
he conceived a fair version of my abstract notation. As all, how- 
ever, that has been said of Mr. de Morgan in relation to the 
logicians in general, equally applies to him in regard to me in 
particular, addition is superfluous. 

So much for Mr. de Morgan's mistakes about "the Cumular 
System," laid to the logicians and myself. I proceed to the 
counter scheme, his own "Exemplar System," proposed in sup- 
plement and correction of the other, and founded, as said, on the 
employment of the predesignation " any" as a universal, not only 
in negative, but also in affirmative, propositions. 

Our English "any" (aenig, anig, Ang.-Sax.) is of a similar 
origin and signification with the Latin "ullus" (unulus), and 
means, primarily and literally {even) one, [even) the least or 
fewest. — But now, to speak of the schools, it is of quodlibetio 
application, ranging from least to greatest,* and (to say nothing 
of extra-logical modes of speech, as interrogation, doubt, condi- 
tioning, extenuation, intension, &c.) is exclusively adapted to 
negation. For example. We can say as we can think, affirma- 
tively : — "All triangles are all trilateral ;" this collectively — 
"The whole (or class) triangle is the whole (or class) trilateral; 
this distributively — " Every (or each several) triangle is every 
(or each several) trilateral." Now, let us try " any" as an affirm- 
ative : — " Any triangle is any trilateral." This is simple non- 
sense ; for we should thus confound every triangle with every 
other, pronouncing them all to be identical. Nor, in fact, does 
Mr. de Morgan attempt this. He wisely omits the form. But 
what an omission! Still, however, the " Table of Exemplars " 



616 APPENDIX Li. LOGICAL, (B.) 

which he does present (p. 25), stands alone, I am persuaded, in 
the history of science. And mark, in what terms it is ushered 
in : — as " a system of predication free from the objections urged 
against the cumular forms, as far as contradiction is concerned" 
nor, Hive them, " unsuited to the genius of common thought or 
common language" Nay, so lucid does it seem to its inventor, 
that, after the notation is detailed, we are told, that it "needs no 
explanation" 

Now, then, let us take, as our first specimen of this " System," 
the fifth proposition of the Table — " Some one X is any one Y ;" 
and applying this form, by interpretation, to a concrete matter, 
we have — " Some one figure is any one triangle" — " Some one 
animal is any one man." Here, however, the proposition is in 
terms absurd ; nor does it even express what it is intended to 
mean. For not any — for not any one — for no one figure is any 
or any one triangle. 

Again, as our second specimen, taking the first proposition of 
the Table — " Any one X is any one Y." This, we are told, 
"gives" or is supposed to mean — "There is but one X and one 
Y, and X is Y." But it means — it can mean — nothing of the 
kind ; it is only doubly unmeaning, or doubly contrary to all 
meaning. For, in the first place, "any" and " any one" neces- 
sarily imply that there are more — more than one ; and, in the 
second, the whole proposition becomes, on such hypothesis, absurd. 
This " Exemplar" proposition is, however, a favorite with Mr. 
de Morgan, who thinks it to afford " a conclusion not admissi- 
ble in the Cumular form" (p. 26). So long as the proposition re- 
mains void of sense, this is true ; not certainly if interpreted into 
meaning. 

Finally, however, the inconsistency of the " Exemplar System" 
is sufficiently shown in this— That its propositions, even when 
not immediately suicidal, do not admit of any rational conversion. 
Thus, the sound without sense — the proposition first adduced, is 
the verbal converse of another which, by chance, is not self-con- 
tradictory ; to wit — "Any one Y is some one X" — "Any one 
triangle is some one figure" — " Any one man is some one animal." 
The reason is obvious. "Any" contains in it "some," "some" 
contains under it " any ;" " some" is the less definite, the genus, 
" any" is the more definite, the species ; " any" is always "some," 
some is not always " any." — The absurdity is, however, carried 



AFFIRMATION AND NEGATION. 617 

to a climax, through Mr. de Morgan's formal limitation of the 
several quantities by " one." 

But enough !— Mr. de Morgan gravely propounds all this as 
" sense and English"- — as in honorable contrast to the uncouth- 
ness and violence and contradictions of the " Cumular System." 
He certainly does not mean to turn logic into ridicule ; but, as- 
suredly, if logic were responsible for the " forms" and " systems" 
thus seriously proposed, it would no longer be respectable enough 
even for a jest. — "This notation," says Mr. de Morgan, "needs 
no explanation." Right ! 

" Emendare jocos, sola litura potest." 

The more special objections of Mr. de Morgan — one and all- 
it would be equally easy to refute ; but while the part, now con- 
sidered, of his paper is a fair specimen of the whole, I am unwill- 
ing to trespass farther on your indulgence, by discussions of so 
limited an interest. — I remain, &c. 

W. Hamilton. 1 

I have now signalized Mr. de Morgan's general and gigantic 
error, that on which is founded the correction he proposes of all 
former Logic ; and proceed to consider his special criticism of my 
peculiar scheme of syllogistic and propositional forms. 

And here I may subdivide Mr. de Morgan's objections into two 
classes ; — the first containing those to the general principle of my 
scheme — the second, those to this or that of its individual doc- 
trines. 

I. — Under the former head there are two . objections. Of 
these : 

1 To this Mr. de Morgan made the following answer ; and on the one point to 
which it is limited, assuredly, he is as completely right, as I am completely wrong. 

" There is but one of what I call Sir W. Hamilton's misapprehensions which I shall 
notice now — and that only to prevent your readers from making fruitless inquiries. 
He states that a volume of the ' Cambridge Philosophical Transactions' has recently 
appeared. This I am pretty certain is not the case. The copy of my memoir which 
I had the honor to forward to him, was one of the extra copies which the courtesy of 
the Society allows to its contributors as soon as their several papers are printed. The 
paging, by which Sir W. Hamilton cites, shows that he used that copy, or one of the 
same issue : — this paging, of course, will be altered when the paper takes its place in 
the volume. 

" The rest of Sir W. Hamilton's letter 'I shall dispose of, so far as I deem it neces. 
sary, if I live to publish another edition of my work on Logic. — I am, &c. 

" A. de Morgan. 

"University College, August 26, 1850." 



618 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. (B). 

1. — The first is supposed — is assumed, without even an at- 
tempt at proof; it requires, indeed, merely to be stated, to be 
refuted. — " Section iv." of Mr. de Morgan's Paper is entitled : — 
" On the Symbolic forms of the system in which all the combina- 
tions of quantity are introduced by Arbitrary Invention of forms 
of predication ;" and it commences : — " This system belongs to 
Sir "William Hamilton, &c." — Now, in applying the term " arbi- 
trary invention" to this scheme, Mr. de Morgan has either gone 
too far, or not far enough. For, if " the forms of predication" 
exist in thought, then is their expression in logic not an " arbi- 
trary invention ;" whereas, if they do not exist in thought, then 
is their expression in logic, not arbitrary, but false. To have 
proved the latter would, indeed, have pricked the " punctum 
saliens" of my system. But not attempting this, Mr. de Mor- 
gan now virtually admits his own thesis to be absurd ; even had 
he not, in fact, previously recorded his formal acknowledgment, 
that the predicate has its quantity in thought. Why then did he 
insinuate, what, he knew, could not be maintained ? 

2. — The second of the two objections under this head is to the 
want, or insufficiency, in my doctrine, of a general Canon of In- 
ference ; for the exceptions, it is argued, are not regulated by, and 
do not manifest, the rule. (P. 13.) — Of all objections, none can 
be more curiously infelicitous than this. In the doctrine referred 
to, there is a rule, and no exceptions. The rule there governs 
every thing ; every thing is governed by the rule. — But, opposed 
to my canon, which, not having studied, he does not understand, 
Mr. de Morgan propounds the following: — "Erase the symbols 
of the middle term, the remaining symbols show the inference." 
(Pp. 7, 11, 18, 26, feci) This canon Mr. de Morgan ought not 
to have given as his own. It is that of Ploucquet : — " Deleatur 
in prcemissis medius ; id quod rest at indicat conclusionem ;" and 
on this canon Ploucquet established his " Logical Calculus." — 
Calculus and Canon have, however, long been rejected by the 
German logicians, as mechanical and useless. Hegel even pro- 
nounces : — " This, as a discovery and improvement in Logic, is 
the bitterest libel that was ever vented against the science." But 
worse than useless and mechanical, it does not hold good ; for, 
though valid in the Aristotelic system, it breaks down in a fourth 
part of the thirty-six moods emerging under my doctrine of syl- 
logism. " Transeat ergo." But has not Mr. de Morgan con- 



PROPOSITION AL FORMS. 619 

founded the exceptions to Ploucquet's canon, with the no excep- 
tions to mine ? ' 

II. — Under the second head there are six litigious points. 

I shall first consider the objections to the propositioned forms, 
which I have peculiarly adopted. But it is proper to premise a 
general enumeration of these ; and in the following table, the 
Roman numerals distinguish such as are recognized in the Aris- 
totelic or common doctrine, whereas the Arabic cyphers mark those 
(half of the whole) which I think ought likewise to be recognized.*' 

Affirmatives. 

1.) Toto-total =Afa=A11 — is all — . 
ii.) Toto-partial=AFi =A11 — is some — . A) 

3.) Parti-total = Ifa =Some — is all — . 
iv.) Parti-partial=lFi = Some — is some — . (I) 

Negatives. 

v.) Toto-total =ANA=Any — is not any — . (E) 

6.) Toto-partial =Ani =Any — is not some — . 
vii.) Parti-total = lNA=Some — is not any — . . (0) 
8.) Parti-partial=lNi = Some — is not some — • 

The preceding eight Propositional Forms, I may also add, are 
illustrated by the following six Diagrams — (if Definitely Indefi- 
nite, for if Indefinitely Definite (see p. 623, sq.) they require a 
series of more artificial and complex lines.) The identity of Sub- 
ject and Predicate is marked and measured by the co-extension 
of the two lines below and above each other ; the non-identity, 
by the converse. The rationale of the letters is manifest ; and it 
is likewise manifest, that this principle of notation maybe carried 
out into Syllogistic. — Proposition (1) is illustrated by Diagram 
(a) ; (ii) by (b) ; (3) by (c) ; (iv) by (d) ; (v) by (e) ; and (8) by 
(f) : but (6) is shown by (b and d) ; as (vii) by (c and d). Prop- 

1 Mr. Thomson (Laws of Thought, &c.) seems to have fallen into a similar inaccu- 
racy ; not perhaps considering, that the disconformity in quantification of the extremes, 
as they appear in the antecedent, and in the conclusion, is, in my doctrine, not an ex- 
ception to, but a consequent of, the canon. 

2 In the literal symbols, I simplify and disintricate the scholastic notation ; taking 
A and I for universal and particular, but extending them to either quality, marking 
affirmation by F, negation by N, the two first consonants of the verbs affirmo and nego 
— v«rbs from which, I have no doubt, that Petrus Hispanus drew, respectively, the 
two first vowels, to denote his four complications of quantity and quality. These I 
have appended. 



620 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. (B.) 

osition (8), indeed, though it have its special diagram (f), quad- 
rates with all the others. 

Aff. Aff. & Neg. Neg. 

C 



b) 



B N Z 



* # # *V £2 



,D J * * * 

a 'A C 'C f)A r- 

* * * e \ e 

,■ G 



Of the four propositional forms specially recognized by me (1, 
3, 6, 8) Mr. de Morgan questions only two; one affirmative and 
One negative, being the first and the last — the toto-total affirma- 
tion, the parti-partial negation. 1 In quoting Mr. de Morgan's 
" objections to this system as promulgated by Sir William Hamil- 
ton" (p. 22), I shall substitute for his symbols his own transla- 
tions of them into common language. 

1. — Toto-total Affirmation. To this form Mr. de Morgan makes 
two objections : the first, that it is complex ; the second, depend- 
ent upon the first, that it can not be denied by a simple proposi- 
tion. Of these objections in their order. 

First Objection. — "First, the fundamental propositions of a logical sys- 
tem should be independent of each other, so that no one of them should be 
a compound of two others. Now 'all Xs are Ys,' or 'X and Y are iden- 
tical names,' is really compounded of 'All Xs are some Ys,' and ' Some 
Xs are all Ys.' If we once grant a complex proposition, why this one 
only, when there are others, out of which, as I have showri, a separate 
system of complex syllogism may be constructed ? — To say that the mode 
of inventing propositions yields no other, is not an answer ; for it is the 
mode itself which is attacked in its results. Every syllogism in which 
' All is all' occurs, is either a strengthened form, or the resultant of two 
other syllogisms." 

The purport of Mr. de Morgan's reasoning in this passage is, 
that the form " All Xs are all Ys" is merely the compound or 
resultant of two simple or original forms — "All Xs are some 
Ys," and " Some Xs are all Ys." This is manifestly erroneous, 
looking no farther than to the text of Mr. de Morgan himself. 

In the first place the proposition "All Xs are all Ys" is said to 



1 Mr. de Morgan and Mr. Thomson, herein, partly agree, partly differ. They dif- 
fer in regard to Toto-total affirmation (1), which the former denies, while the latter 
allows. They differ also about Toto-partial negation (6), which Mr. Thomson refuses, 
but Mr. de Morgan apparently admits. They both agree, however, in rejecting Parti- 
partial negation (8). See p. 627. 



PROPOSITIONAL FORMS. 621 

be compound, in contrast to two other propositions its constitu- 
ents. But how " All Xs are all Ys" is a proposition more com- 
plex than " All Xs are some Ys," than "Some Xs are all Ys," or 
even than " Some Xs are some Ys," I confess myself wholly 
unable to imagine. Mr. de Morgan does not pretend that the 
predicate has no quantity ; but how one quantity can be more 
complex than another — how All should be compound, and Some 
simple, he has not attempted to explain. — Nay more. He form- 
ally admits, that a proposition with its predicate universally, and 
its subject particularly, quantified is simple; as, in like manner 
a proposition with a particular predicate and a universal subject: 
and yet, in the same breath, he coolly assumes (for he propounds 
neither argument nor explanation), that a proposition with its 
subject and predicate each universally quantified is complex ! 
But if " Some figure is all triangle" be a simple proposition, is 
it possible to conceive, that " All triangle is all trilateral" should 
not be a simple proposition likewise ? It seems, that some and 
all, all and some, some and some, are each elementary, while all 
and all is alone derivative ! 

Bat in the second place, this inconsistency is eclipsed by ano- 
ther ; for Mr. de Morgan not only maintains that the proposition 
" All Xs are all Ys" is compound, but, though itself confessedly 
valid, compounded of two incompossible propositions—" All Xs 
are some Ys," and " Some Xs are all Ys ;" — in other words, that 
"All triangle is all trilateral" is the combined result of "All 
triangle is some trilateral," and " Some triangle is all tri- 
lateral." But, unless some be identified with all, if either of 
the latter propositions is true the other must be false ; — nay, 
in fact, if either be true, the very proposition which they are 
supposed to concur in generating is false likewise. 1 Mr. de 
Morgan proceeds : 



1 See p. 623, sq. — In confirmation of the above, I am happy to adduce the follow- 
ing testimony by a very able logician : — " Psychologically as well as logically, we be- 
lieve that Sir William Hamilton is right in maintaining ' All A is all B? to be a single 
judgment, in opposition to Mr. de Morgan, who exhibits it in the complex form, ' All 
A is B, and all B is A ;' thereby accepting the second horn of the above dilemma, 
since ' all A is some B and all B is some A," would be a self-contradictory assertion." 
And in a note : — " A curious inconsistency may be remarked in the theory of the 
complex proposition, when placed in antagonism to that of the quantified predicate. 
I can not assert ' all A is B and all B is A,' without having thought of A and B as co 
extensive, i. e., without having made the judgment 'all A is all B.' If we know the 
quantity of the predicate, we are of course entitled to state it. The complex proposi- 
tion is only preferable on the supposition of our ignorance, a supposition which anni- 



622 APPENDIX II., LOGICAL. (B.) 

Second objection. — " Secondly, one object of formal logic being to pro- 
vide form of enunciation for all truth, and form of denial for all falsehood, 
it is clear that every falsehood which can be enunciated as a truth should 
be deniable within the forms of the science. Now the simple denial of 
' All Xs are all Ys' is the disjunctive assertion, ' Either no Xs are some 
Ys, or some Xs are no Ys.' Though it happen that I can prove one of 
these to be true, without knowing which, yet the power of denying in an 
elementary form the elementary proposition, ' All is all,' is reiused me. 
A philologist asserts the Greek words A and B to be identical in mean- 
ing : he says ' All A is all B.' One passage of Homer, and one of Hesiod, 
both contain the doubtful word C, having two possible explanations, the 
first of which makes Homer assert that some As are not Bs, while the 
second makes Hesiod assert that some Bs are not As The premises being 
admitted, the resulting denial of the simple 'proposition of Sir William 
Hamilton's system is only obtainable by a dilemma, or, as it were, meta- 
syllogismy 

Before proceeding to consider Mr. de Morgan's argument in 
this paragraph, I must say a word upon his language. By 
"dental," "deniable," &c, he must mean contradictory denial, 
contradictorily deniable, &c. This opposition alone affords a 
single pair of propositions, and the one alternative of truth or 
falsehood ; and he apparently rejects contrary denial. The word 
contrary he however commonly employs for contradictory. But 
contrary opposition emerges, when a plurality of propositions can 
severally deny the original enouncement, but where each, though 
not all of these, may be false. This being noted, I go on- 

In the first place, Mr. de Morgan's reasoning is inapplicable. 
An enlarged system is not, as he himself admits (p. 20), to be 
criticised by the laws, far less, then, by the accidents, of an un- 
enlarged one. It may be quite true, that the four propositional 
forms of the Aristotelic scheme has each its contradictory oppo- 
site ; but it by no means follows, that the same accident should 
attend every legitimate amplification of that scheme. It is suffi- 
cient, that every competent assertion should have its competent 
denial. 

But, in the second place, in point of fact, the Aristotelic contra- 
diction only proceeds on a certain arbitrary hypothesis of parti- 
cularity ; to wit, that " some" is to mean only " some at least" 
(possibly therefore, all or none), thus constituting, both in affirm- 

hilates the complex proposition itself. If the assertion, ' all A is some B and all B is 
some A' be suicidal, is there more vitality in ' all A is (I know not how much) B, and 
all B is (I know not how much) AV But the question, to be fully discussed, must 
be treated on psychological as well as logical grounds. Logic deals with the judgment 
as already formed ; psychology inquires what is the actual process of the mind in 
forming it." — (North British Review, Vol. xv. p. 116.) 



PROPOSITIONAL FORMS. 623 

ation and in negation, virtually a double proposition — a proposi- 
tion comprising, in effect, tivo contraries. 1 

1 I have here, and once before (p. 621) criticised Mr. de Morgan, not on Aristotelic 
principles. It is but fair that I state articulately the grounds. 

All particularity, all " some" is, generically, indefinite ; but one particularity is of 
one indefinitude, another is of another. In short, to apply the technical formula of 
Specification (p. 628) in its highest simplicity — in its most repulsive nakedness ; — 
some Some is not some Some. For, so to speak, of " some," one species denotes inde- 
finite definitude ; while another denotes definite indefinitude. And why 1 The former 
species not definitely excluding the definite — the "all" and "none," is therefore, at 
once, in different respects, indefinite and definite, that is indefinitely definite ; while 
the latter, definitely excluding the definite — the " all," the " none," is, therefore, at 
once, in different respects, definite and indefinite, that is, definitely indefinite 

1°. In the sense of indefinite definitude. — Affirmatively : " Some" means "some 
at least — some perhaps all ;" that is, " some," itself always indefinite, but not definite- 
ly exclusive of the definite, " aM." ^Negatively : "Not some" means "not some, at 
least — not some, perhaps none ;" that is, "not some," itself always indefinite, but not 
definitely exclusive of the definite "not any," or "none" — "At least" is the watch- 
word of this system, in affirmatives as in negatives. 

2°. In the sense of definite indefinitude. — Affirmatively : " Some" means " some 
at most — some not all — some only;" that is, "some," itself always indefinite, but 
definitely exclusive of the definite "all." — Negatively : "Not some" means "not 
some, at most — not some and yet not none — not some, only;" that is, "not some," 
itself always indefinite, but definitely exclusive of the definite, "not any," or "none." 
— " At most," both in affirmative and negatives, is the watchword of this system. 

Of these several meanings of " some," all the world has been, at least implicitly, 
never unaware ; and of the two, the latter is certainly the more prominent. This 
enhances the marvel, that the former only has been explicitly developed and formally 
generalized by Aristotle ; but what Aristotle failed to do, has been left undone by sub- 
sequent logicians. The two different meanings afford, however, in many cases two 
different results, as well in the relation of Incompossibility, as in the relation of (imme- 
diate) Inference : and what is worse, even than the exclusive consideration of a single 
meaning, is, that Inference and Incompossibility (especially by the logicians after 
Aristotle) have, in that single meaning, been jumbled together under the barren and 
ambiguous head of Opposition. 

But worst of all ; in fact, the one meaning considered exclusively by Aristotle and 
the logicians, has, only improperly, an intralogical, formal, objective significance. It 
is not a necessity, either of thought or of things, but merely an accident of the former. 
Its peculiar indefinitude is a contribution from the contingency of our ignorance, and 
with our ignorance would disappear ; for (to say nothing of Individuals or Individual- 
ized Generals), in reality and in thought, every quantity is necessarily either all, or 
none, or some. Of these the third presents the only formal indefinitude ; and it is form- 
ally exclusive of the other two. The double inadvertence, as I think, of Aristotle (An. 
Pr. I. 2.) in recognizing the indesignatc (dt)i6pio-Tov) to be at once a quantity and an 
indefinitude (for the Indesignate is thought, either precisely, as whole or as part, or 
vaguely, as the one or the other, unknown which, but the worse always presumed) ; 
— this vagueness — this material, subjective and contingent indefinitude, lay at the root 
of his whole doctrine of Particularity, the indefinitude of which quantity he should 
have kept purely formal, objective and necessary, instead of confounding the two inde- 
finitudes together. Thus by mixing up the material with the formal — what was inde- 
finitely thought with what was thought as indefinite, Aristotle (to say nothing of other 
consequences) annulled all inference of, what I would call, Integration. On his doc- 
trine we are not warranted, from the proposition — " Some dogs are all barking animals" 
(" Quoddam caninum est omne latrans"), to infer the proposition — " Some dogs do 
not bark" (Quoddam caninum est nullum latrans") — But I am lapsing into discussion. 
— We must therefore have two Tables : one for Incompossibility, another for Infer- 



624 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. (B.) 

In the third place, however, the proposition is, in truth, contra- 
dictorily deniable ; for every legitimate affirmation must admit 
of a legitimate negation. But negation and affirmation must be 
contradictorily opposed : as Aristotle has expressed it — "Between 
affirmation and negation there is no mean." Yet it does not fol- 
low, that the denial should rest on a single alternative case — on 
a contradictory proposition. For it may well be, that a denial is 
supported only on one or other of two incompossible contraries ; 
but it will be valid if one or other of the contraries be true. In 
the present case, the proposition, for example — "All (class, whole, 
every, &c.) triangle is all (class, whole, every, &c.) trilateral," 
is contradictorily denied by the proposition — " All (class, &c.) 
triangle — is not— all (class, &c.) trilateral," in the sense — " This 
proposition, 'All triangle is all trilateral,' is untrue" And such, 
in the present form, is comparatively safe ; for there being here 
two universal predesignations, the negative particle, like the ass 
of Buridanus, is left in equilibrio, and not necessarily attracted, 
by preference, to either. (Illustrations might be drawn from in- 
dividuals and individualized classes.) The denial is here, cer- 
tainly, vague and ambiguous ; but so it ought. For there are 
five several cases, any of which it may mean ; 'and of these any 
will validly support the negation of the affirmative proposition. 
These are : — 1°, "Not-all triangle is all trilateral.," equivalent to 
the proposition — "Some triangle is all trilateral;" 2°, "All tri- 
angle is not-all trilateral," equivalent to the proposition — "All 
triangle is some trilateral ;" these oppositions, overlooked by the 
logicians, I call inconsistents. The following are contraries : — 
3°, "All triangle is-not (i. e. excludes) all trilateral," tantamount 
(though ambiguously) to the proposition — " Any triangle is not 
(no triangle is) any trilateral;" 4°, "All triangle is not all tri- 
lateral," signifying — "Some triangle is no trilateral;" 5°, "All 
triangle is-not all trilateral," in the sense of — " No triangle is 
some trilateral." The first and fourth, the second and fifth, are 
in fact what I call integrants. 

Now Mr. de Morgan misconceives all this. — In the first place, 

ence ; and under each, we must distinguish the result on either system of particularity. 
At present I can merely append the compound Table (see following page) ; and shall 
only say. that a better, though a more elaborate, plan of showing the various corre- 
lations of the several pairs of propositions, as to write all the eight on the phases of 
octagonal diagrams, and then to connect them by different lines (thicker, thinner, 
waving, broken, dotted, &c.) representing, in the different systems, their mutual de- 
pendencies. 



PR0P0SFT10NAL FORMS. 



625 



he does not perceive that a proposition can be contradictorily de- 
nied, though the denial itself may rest ultimately only on a single 
contrary or inconsistent proposition. For though the denegand. 
he only contrarily or inconsistently opposed to each of the alter- 
natively supporting propositions, it is however contradictorily 



TABLE OF THE MUTUAL RELATIONS OF THE EIGHT PROPOSITIONAL FORMS, ON EITHER 
SYSTEM OF PARTICULARITY. (FOR GENEALS ONLY.) 



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Abbreviations: — bi.=6z7a<eraZ ; cr.=cross; Contrar.=Con«ranes; di.=d!>cc<; Incons. 
=Inconsistents ; Int. or Integr. ^Integration ; Repugn. = Repugnant s, Contradictories ; Res 
or R.estr.=Restriclion, Subalternation ; ur\.=unilatcral. — Blanks: in l.-=Compossibles ; in II 
—No inference. — (Unilateral, bilateral, cross, direct, refer to the Extremes.) 

The preceding Table may not be quite accurate in details. 

Rr 



626 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. (B.) 

opposed to them as a class. — In the second place, he has over- 
looked all the five cases on which the denial may be established, 
except the last two. — In the third place, he marvelously supposes 
that each of these does not singly invalidate the toto-total affirma- 
tive, but that the truth of this can be only denied by a disjunctive 
proposition made up of a toto-partial and a parti-total negative ; 
or (for he varies), of two parti-total negatives. — In the fourth 
place, Mr. de Morgan, thus varying, does not observe, that his pre- 
cept and his example are not at one. — Further, in the fifth place, 
he is here seen strangely to confound the hypothetical process of 
thought, prior to all negation, with the subsequent categorical 
negation itself; and still more strangely, to limit the common 
hypothetical preliminary to this form exclusively. Adhering to 
the present form, and to our previous example, the reasoner says 
to himself: — " The proposition — 'All triangle is all trilateral,' is 
false, if case 1, or 2, or 3, or 4, or 5, one or more, be true ; but 
case 4 alone, or cases 4 and 5 together, are true, therefore," &c. 
After this silent hypothetical preliminary, he categorically states 
his contradictory denial. The process is the same, where there 
is only one possible alternative, when, subsequently, the proposi- 
tion supporting the denial is itself directly and not disjunctively 
contradictory of the denegand. We think antecedently : — " If 
' Aristotle is a philosopher,' be true, then ' Aristotle is not a phi- 
losopher,' must be false, and vice versa ; but that is true ; there- 
fore this is false." We then openly state the negation.' — Mr. de 
Morgan goes on to the second form. 

2. — Parti-pai'tial Negation. To this Mr. de Morgan makes 
the following objection : 

"Thirdly, the proposition 'Some Xs are not some Ys,' has no funda- 
mental proposition which denies it, and not even a compound of other 
propositions. It is then open to the above objection : and to others pe- 
culiar to itself. It is what I have called (F. L., p. 153.) a spurious pro- 
position, as long as either of its names applies to more than one instance. 

1 In reference to this objection of Mr. de Morgan, it has been acutely observed by 
the ingenious critic previously quoted : — " The true contradictory we take to be, 
' all A is not all B,' which, like the original proposition, may be treated collectively 
or distributwcly, i. c. as a singular or as an universal proposition. In the latter case 
it is compatible with one of three distinct assertions, 'no A is B,' ' some A is not B,' 
' some B is not A ;' but the opponent does not commit himself to any one of the three. 
He denies only to the extent in which the original proposition was asserted, and no 
further ; and hence, in proportion as the affirmation is definite, the negation will be 
indefinite." (North British Review, vol. xv. p. 116.) This, it will be observed, is 
in principle the same with what has just been alleged. 



PROPOSITIONAL FORMS. 627 

And the denial is as follows : — ' There is, but one X, and but one Y, and 
X is Y.' Unless we know beforehand that there is but one soldier, and 
one animal, and that soldier the animal, we can not deny that ' some sol- 
diers are not some animals' Whenever we know enough of X and Y 
to bring forward ' some Xs are not some Ys,' as what could be conceived 
to have been false, we know more, namely, 'No X is Y,' which, when 
X and Y are singular, is true or false with ' some Xs are not some Ys.' " 

Here also Mr. de Morgan wholly misunderstands the nature 
and purport of the form which he professes to criticise. He calls 
it " a spurious proposition." Spurious in law means a had kind 
of bastard. This is, however, not only a legitimate, for it ex- 
presses one of the eight necessary relations of propositional terms, 
but, within its proper sphere, one of the most important of the 
forms, which Logic comprehends, and which logicians have neg- 
lected. It may, indeed, and that easily, be illogically perverted. 
It may be misemployed to perform the function which other 
forms are peculiarly adapted more effectually to discharge ; it 
may be twisted to sever part of one notion from part of another, 
the two total notions being already perhaps thought as distinct ; 
— and then, certainly, in this relation, it may be considered use- 
less :— -but in no relation can it ever logically be denominated 
" spurious.'''' For why ? Whatever is operative in thought, must 
be taken into account, and consequently be overtly expressible 
in logic ; for logic must be, as to be it professes, an unexclusive 
reflex of thought, and not merely an arbitrary selection— a series 
of elegant extracts, out of the forms of thinkina:. Whether the 
form that it exhibits as legitimate be stronger or weaker, be more 
or less frequently applied ; — that, as a material and contingent 
consideration, is beyond its purview. — But the form in question 
is, as said, not only legitimate — not " spurious," — it is most im- 
portant. 

What then is the function which this form is peculiarly — is, 
indeed, alone, competent to perform? — A parti-partial negative 
is the proposition in which, and in which exclusively, we declare 
a whole of any kind to be divisible. Some A is not some A; — 
this is the judgment of divisibility and of division ; l the negation 
of this judgment (and of its corresponding integrant) in the asser- 
tion that A has no some, no parts, is the judgment of indivisi- 
bility, of unity, of simplicity. This form is implicitly at work 

1 Looking to the table of Breadth and Depth (p. 631.) and taking the highest genus, 
we say : " Some A is not some A ; for some A is A E, while some A is A |33;" and 
so on. — See also above, p. 163. 



62S APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. (B.) 

in all the sciences, and it has only failed in securing the atten- 
tion of logicians as an abstract form, because, in actual use, it 
is too familiar to be notorious, lying, in fact, unexpressed and la- 
tescent in every concrete application. Even in Logic itself it is 
indispensable. In that science it constitutes no less than the 
peculiar formula of the great principle of Specification (and In- 
dividualization), that is the process by which a class (genus or 
species) is divided into its subject parts — the counter process, to 
wit, of Grenerification. And this great logical formula is to be 
branded by logical writers as " spurious." ! No doubt, the par- 
ticularity, as a quantity easily understood, is very generally elided 
in expression, though at work in thought; or it is denoted by a 
substitute. Meaning, we avoid saying — " Some men are not 
some men." This we change, perhaps, into " men are not men," 
or "how different are men from men," or "man from man," or 
"these from those," or "some from other," &c. Still, "some is 
not some" lies at the root ; and when we oppose " other," " some 
other," &c. to " some," it is evident, that " other" is itself only 
obtained as the result of the negation, which, in fact, it pleonas- 
tically embodies. For "other than" is only a synonyme for "is 
not;" "other (or some other) A" is convertible with "not some 
A;" while there is implied by "this," "not that;" by "that," 
" not this ;" and by " the other," " neither this nor that :" and so 
on. Here we must not confound, the logical with the rhetorical, 
the necessary in thought with the agreeable in expression. 

Following Mr. de Morgan in his selected example, and not 
even transcending his more peculiar science : in the first place, 
as the instance of division I borrow his logical illustration from 
the class " soldier." Now in what manner is this generic notion 
divided, into species ? We say to ourselves : — " Some Soldier is 
not some Soldier ; for some Soldier is (all) Infantry, some Soldier 
is (all) Cavalry, &c. ; and (any) Infantry is not (any) Cavalry." 
A parti-partial negative is the only form of judgment for division, 
of what kind soever be the whole ; (and Mr. de Morgan can state 
for it no other.) — Again, in the second place, as the example of 
indivisibility : " Some of this Point, is not some of this (same) 
Point." Such a proposition, Mr. de Morgan, as a mathematician, 
can not admit, for a mathematical point is, ex hypothesi, without 
some — without some and some — without parts, same and other ; 
it is indivisible. He says, indeed, that a parti-partial negative 
can not be denied. But if he be unable to admit, he must be 



PARTI-PARTIAL NEGATION. 629 

able to dei?y ; and it would be a curious — a singular anomaly, 
if logic afforded no competent form for so ordinary a negation; 
if we could not logically deny, that Socrates is a class — that an 
individual is a universal- — that the thought of an indivisible unit 
is the thought of a divisible plurality. 

o. — Quantities of Breadth and Depth. 1 — I now proceed to con- 
sider Mr. de Morgan's observations on these quantities (pp. 29, 
sq.), constituting, as they do, the central doctrine of an adequate 
system of syllogism ; but I regret to be again obliged to show, 
that he radically misunderstands what he attempts to illustrate. 
These, which are merely views of the same relation from opposite 
points, Mr. de Morgan regards as things in themselves different. 
The reading of a proposition in depth, in contrast to its reading 
in breadth, " is," he says, " not another reading of the same pro- 
position, but another proposition, derived infer enti ally, though 
not syllogistically, by aid of the dictum de majore et minoreP 
He endeavors subsequently to prove, " that a new distinction is 
introduced ; and, farther, that the tivo modes of reading ore not 
convertible ; the extensive mode gives the intensive, but not vice 
versa in all cases." This, after an elaborate detail, he calls: "an 
important distinction. In the affirmative, any portion of the 
intension of the predicate may be affirmed of the subject ; in the 
negative, it is not true that any portion of the intension of the 
■predicate may be denied of the subject. Thus, ' No planet moves 
in a circle,' gives us a right to deny any constitutive attribute of 
circular motion to that of a planet, but not any attribute ; not, 
for instance, the progression through every longitude." 

This suffices to show how completely Mr. de Morgan mistakes 
the great principle :— The predicate of the predicate is, with the 
predicate, affirmed or denied, of the subject. In both cases, in 



1 This distinction, as limited to the doctrine of single notions, was signalized by 
the Port- Royal Logicians, under the name of Extension and Comprehension ; Leib- 
nitz and his followers preferred the more antithetic titles of Extension and Intension, 
though Intension be here somewhat deflected from its proper meaning — that of De- 
cree ; and the Quantitas Ambitus and Quantitas Complexus has, among sundry other 
synonymes, been employed — not exclusively, in modern times, for Aristotle uses 
to Trepie^ov and to nepie^o/ievoi'. — The best expression, I think for the distinction 
is Breadth (HKdros, Latitudo), and Depth (Bddos, Profunditas). This nomenclature, 
which I have long employed, was borrowed from certain of the ancient Greek logi- 
cians ; but as their works have been, for long, rarely and perfunctorily looked into, 
this neglect may account for the oblivion in which the antiquity of these terms has 
remained, even after the distinction, which they best denominate, had obtained a 
renovated importance. , . 



630 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. (B.) 

negatives equally as in affirmatives, the rule is thoroughgoing. 
To say nothing of affirmation, touching which there is no dispute 
— All that enters into the predicate notion is denied of the sub- 
ject, if the predicate itself be denied. There is no exception. 
The rule is absolute ; and, in reference to Breadth and Depth, 
there is no difference whatever between " constitutive" and 
" attributive," between necessary and contingent, between pecu- 
liar and common. It is of no consequence, what has antecedently 
been knoivn, what is newly discovered. These are merely mate- 
rial affections. We have only to consider what it is we formally 
think. In fact, if this principle be not universally right, if Mr. 
de Morgan be not altogether wrong, my extension of the doctrine 
of Breadth and Depth, in correlation, from notions to propositions 
and syllogisms, has been only an egregious blunder. I am, there- 
fore, bound to do battle for it, as pro aris et focis ; and fortun- 
ately, its vindication is of the easiest. 

"Newton is not Leibnitz." Here the individual, Leibnitz, is 
definitely, is contradictorily, denied, of the individual, Newton. 
Nothing of Leibnitz is declared to be any thing of Newton ; and 
vice versa. Thus, every attribute comprehended in our thought 
of Leibnitz, be it his humanity, be it the wearing of his wig 
awry, is, in this proposition, virtually denied of Newton. — But 
again, we say, " Leibnitz is a mathematician." Now, in so far 
as the notion of mathematician is in this proposition affirmed to 
be contained in the thought of Leibnitz, "mathematician" is 
mediately deniable of Newton. So much is certain. But do we 
herefrom infer — is this tantamount to saying — " Newton is not a 
mathematician," as a general negative, and in the sense of no or 
not any mathematician ? Assuredly not. For this would be to 
deny of Newton more than is comprehended in the notion affirm- 
atively predicated of Leibnitz. Let us consider what is meant 
by the proposition — "Leibnitz is a mathematician." "A math- 
ematician" does not here imply all, every, or even any mathema- 
tician, but some mathematician — a certain mathematician ; and 
this particulare — be it vagum, be it signatum — this some or cer- 
tain mathematician which we affirm of Leibnitz, w r e do deny of 
Newton, in denying him to be Leibnitz. To take Mr. de Morgan's 
own example : "VVe do not universally deny of a planet any pro- 
gression through every longitude, in saying, " No planet moves 
in a circle ;" but we deny of it particularly some such progres- 
sion — to wit, a circular. More, indeed, we could not, from the 



BREADTH AND DEPTH. 



631 



proposition. For all circular progression through every longitude 
is only some — is only a certain kind of, progression through, &c. 
Progression, &c., is the genus ; circular progression, &c, is the 
species. — This, by the way, is an instance of the necessity in logic 
of a toto-partial negative, though, as shown, such propositional 
form has been neglected or proscribed by logical authors. 

Note. — As others, besides Mr. de Morgan, have misunderstood this mat- 
ter. I may subjoin the following Diagram ; representing Breadth and 
Depth, with the relations of Affirmation and Negation to these quantities. 



Line op Breadth. 







*"~" 


i r'V""" 




— — 


A 


A 


A 


A A 


A 1 


\A 


E 


E 


E 


E E 


1* 




I 

r 

G 


I 



I 



I 
10 1 


l.i 






U 


u 


\U 








Y 


|r 










41 















Aff. 



A 



Neq. 



§ 



V 



Geound of Reality. 



In the preceding Table there are represented : — by A, A, &c, the highest 
genus or widest attribute ; by Y, the lowest species or narrowest attribute ; 
while the other four horizontal series of vowels typify the subaltern genera 
and species, or the intermediate attributes. The vowels are reserved ex- 
clusively for classes, or common qualities ; whereas the consonants z', z, z", 
(and which to render the contrast more obtrusive are not capitals), repre- 
sent individuals or singulars. Every higher class or more common attri- 
bute is supposed (in conformity with logical precision) to be dichotomised 
— -to be divided into two by a lower class or attribute, and its contradic- 
tory or negative. This contradictory, of which only the commencement 
appears, is marked by an italic vowel, preceded by a perpendicular line 
( | ) signifying not or non, and analogous to the minus ( — ) of the mathe- 
maticians. This being understood, the table at once exhibits the real 
identity and rational differences of Breadth and Depth, which, though 
denominated quantities, are, in reality, one and the same quantity, viewed 
in counter relations and from opposite ends. Nothing is the one, which 
is not, pro tanto, the other. 

In Breadth : the supreme genus (A, A, &c.) is, as it appears, absolutely 
the greatest whole ; an individual (z) absolutely the smallest part ; whereas 
the intermediate classes are each of them a relative part or species by refer- 
ence to the class and classes above it ; a relative whole or genus, by refer- 
ence to the class or classes below it. In Depth : the individual is absolute- 
ly the greatest whole, the highest genus is absolutely the smallest part ; 
while every relatively lower class or species, is relatively a greater whole 



632 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. (B.) 

than the class, classes, or genera, above it. — The two quantities are thus, as 
the diagram represents, precisely the inverse of each other. The greater the 
Breadth, the less the Depth ; the greater the Depth, the less the Breadth ; 
and each, within itself, affording the correlative differences of whole and 
part, each, therefore, in opposite respects, contains and is contained. But, 
for distinction's sake, it is here convenient to employ a difference, not alto- 
gether arbitrary, of expression. We should say : — " containing and con- 
tained under" for Breadth ; — " containing and contained in," for Depth. 
This distinction, which has been taken by some modern logicians, though 
unknown to many of them, was not observed by Aristotle. We find him 
(to say nothing of other ancient logicians), using the expression ev oAo) 
elvai or vrrapx^v, for either whole. Though different in the order of 
thought (ratione), the two quantities are identical in the nature of things 
(re). Each supposes the other ; and Breadth is not more to be distinguished 
from Depth, than the relations of the sides, from the relations of the angles, 
of a triangle. In effect it is precisely the same reasoning, whether we 
argue in Depth — " z' is (i. e. as subject, contains in it the inherent attri- 
bute) some Y ; all Y is some U ; all U is some ; all is some I ; all I 
is some E ; all E is some A ; therefore, z' is some A :" or whether we 
argue in Breadth — " Some A is (i. e. as class, contains under it the sub- 
ject part) all E ; some E is all I ; some I is all ; some is all U ; 
some U is all Y; some Y is z' ;— therefore, some A is z'." The two 
reasonings, internally identical, are externally the converse of each other ; 
the premise and term, which in Breadth is major, in Depth is minor. 1 In 
syllogisms also, where the contrast of the two quantities is abolished, there, 
with the difference of figure, the differences of major and minor premise 
and term fall likewise. In truth, however, common language in its 
enouncement of propositions is here perhaps more correct and philosophical 
than the technical language of logic itself. For as it is only an equation 
— only an affirmation of identity, or its negation, which is, in either 
quantity, proposed ; therefore the substantive verb (is, is not), used in both 
cases, speaks more accurately, thsn the expressions, contained (ox not con- 
tained) in of the one, contained (or not contained) under of the other. 
In fact, the tivo quantities and the tivo quantifications have by Logicians 
been neglected together. 

This Table (the principle of which becomes more palpably demonstra- 
tive when the parts of the table are turned into the parts of a circular 
machine), exhibits all the mutual relations of the counter quantities. — 1°, 
It represents the classes, as a series of resemblances thought as one, (by a 
repetition of the same letter in the same series), but as really distinct (by 
separating lines). Thus, A is only A, not A, A, A, &c. ; some Animal is 

1 Though the theory of the syllogism in Depth (far less in both quantities conjunct- 
ly) was not generalized by Aristotle nor by any of the ancient logicians, it seems to 
have wrought unconsciously in determining the order of the premises. Our common 
order, that of Breadth, is derived from Boethius ; and his influence was limited to the 
West — to the Latin Schools. The Greeks, Arabians, Jews, &c., generally adhered to 
the order which, before Boethius, was, with few exceptions, prevalent in the Latin 
world ; — the proposition which wc call the minor premise standing first. The truth 
in this matter has been simply reversed by modern scholars and historians of philoso- 
phy. To quote only the most recent authority : Waitz, in his late valuable edition of 
the Organon, has, I see, followed the learned editors of Apuleius, in this universal 
error. Even the great John Albert Fabricius is at fault. 



BREADTH AND DEPTH. 633 

not some Animal ; one class of Animals is not all, every, or any other ; 
this Animal is not that ; Socrates is not Plato ; z is not z'. On the other 
hand, E is E A ; and YisYUOIEA; every lower and higher letter 
in the series coalescing uninterruptedly into a series of recipocral subjects 
and predicates, as shown by the absence of all discriminating lines. Thus, 
Socrates (z'), is Athenian (Y), Greek (U), European (0), Man (I), Mam- 
male (E), Animal (A). Of course the series must be in grammatical and 
logical harmony. We must not collate notions abstract and notions con- 
crete. — 2°, The table shows the inverse correlation of the two quantities in 
respect of amount. For example : A (i. e. A, A, &c.) the highest genus is 
represented as having six times the Breadth of Y ; while Y (i. e. Y — A) 
the lowest species, has six times the Depth of A. — 3°, The Table mani- 
fests all the classes, as in themselves unreal, subjective, ideal ; for these 
are merely fictions or artifices of the mind, for the convenience of thinking. 
Universals only exist in nature, as they cease to be universal in thought : 
that is, as they are reduced from general and abstract attributes to indi- 
vidual and concrete qualities. A — Y are only truly objective as distributed 
through z, z', z", &c. ; and in that case they are not universals. As Boe- 
thius expresses it: — " Omne quod est, eo quod est., singulare est."— 4°, 
The opposition of class to class, through contradictory attributes, is dis- 
tinguished by lines different from those marking the separation of one part 
of the same class from another. Thus, Animal, or Sentiently-organized 
(A), is contrasted with Not-animal, or Not-sentiently-organized ( | A), by 
lines thicker than those which merely discriminate one Animal (A), from 
another (A). — Thus : 

Touching Propositions : — An affirmative proposition is merely an 
equation of the quantities of its Subject and Predicate, in Breadth or in 
Depth indifferently, and the consequent declaration of the coalescence, 
pro tanto, of the two terms themselves into a single notion ; a negative 
proposition, on the contrary, is an enouncement of the non-equation of the 
quantities— of the non-identity of the terms. Every proposition may, in 
fact, be cast, be considered, at will, in either quantity, or in neither ; there- 
ibre, if a competent notation we have, we must have one, which in every 
proposition is able to represent, at once, both the counter quantities, and 
even to sublimate them into one. 

Touching Syllogisms: — A competent notation of syllogism, must, in like 
manner, avail consistently to exhibit all the syllogistic figures, as determ- 
ined by the several relations of the two quantities to the middle term ; and 
it must also be able of itself to manifest the differences of mood, abstract- 
ing from the positive differences of figure altogether. For of these differ- 
ences, the modal is essential, the schematic is contingent. — Finally, if our 
system of notation be complete, we must possess not only one notation 
capable of representing, in different, though analogous, diagrams, syllogisms 
of every figure and of no figure ; but another, which shall, at once and in 
the same diagram, exhibit every syllogistic mode, apart from all schematic 
differences, be they positive, be they privative. All this my two schemes 
of notation, in conjunction, profess to do ; and if I be not mistaken, all this 
they fully and simply accomplish. 

In regard to the relation which the quantities of Depth and Breadth 
bear to the qualities of Affirmation and Negation, it is hardly necessary 
to say more than has been stated above (p. 613). Affirmation follows 
the ascending order, that of superordination ; Negation follows the de- 



634 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. (B). 

see ruling order, that of subordination. This is shown by the arrows. In 
regard 1o the horizontal order, that of eo-ordiuation : in the Affirmation 
of one co-ordinate (individual or class), the other, or others, are thereby 
denied ; but from the Negation of one co-ordinate we can not infer the 
Affirmation of any other — unless the subject belong to the immediately 
higher class, and that class bo dichotomized by contradiction. 

I stated above (p. 147), that the Prepositional Modes, which from their 
generality, had been introduced into Formal Logic, are merely Material 
— themselves material predicates (perhaps, subjects), or material affections 
of the predicate (perhaps subject) ; — that these modes stand, to each other 
in the relation of genus and species ; — and that they may, therefore, be 
reduced to form and logical integrity. T may here briefly explain my 
doctrine on this point. 

All predication is the predication of existence ; and the predication of 
existence is either the predication of existence simply, purely, absolutely, 
or the predication of existence not simply, purely, absolutely, but under 
certain limitations, manners, modes — modal predication. Now, these 
modes are, in themselves, affections of this or that particular matter, of 
which Logic, as a formal science, can take no account. Modal predica- 
tion is thus, immediately and in itself, extra-logical. But if we can re 
duce these modes to those relations with which Logic is conversant ; in 
that case, Logic may mediately deal with them, as it deals with all other 
objects ; that is, consider them, not as they really exist, in and for them- 
selves, but as they come under the forms of the understanding — the forms 
of thought, as thought. Such relations are those of containing and con- 
tained, in the counter quantities of Depth and Breadth — in a word, the 
relations of Genus, Species, Individual. That the modes which, without 
such reduction, have, to the utter confusion of the science, been intruded 
into Logic, may be so reduced, is, I think, possible ; and the following 
scheme will show how I would realize the possibility. The whole diffi- 
culty of the problem lies in the vagueness and ambiguity of language ; 
and we have only to fix the meaning of the words, to render obvious the 
logical dependency of the things. 

Modes. 

* ' N 

(A.) Possible. (\A.) Impossible. 



(A, E.) Actual. (A, | E.) Potential. 

(A, E, I.) Necessary. (A, E, , 7 ) Contingent. 

(A.) The Possible (to dvva-bv, possibile, &c), what can £e,=the not im- 
possible. 

i\A.) The Impossible (to advvaTdv, impossibile, &c), what can not be, 
=the not possible. — This and the preceding arc congenera, con- 
tradictory of each other. 

(A, E.) The Actual (no ev evepyeia, to ev ev~eXex eia > actuate, quod in 
actu, in esse, est, &c.), what is noiv, =the not potential. 

(A, |-E.) The Potential ( to ev 6vvdj.iec, potentiate, quod in posse, in po- 
tentia, est, &c), what is not at this, but may be, at an other time, 
= the not actual. — This and that immediately preceding are con- 
species, and mutual contradictories. In a logical relation, these 
have been overlooked by Aristotle and the logicians ; for the 
imdpxovoa npoTaaig of the Philosopher, is the pure or non-modal 
proposition, and altogether different from the predication of actuality. 



BREADTH AND DEPTH. 636 

(A, E, I.) The Necessary (to avaynalov, necessarium, quod necesse est, 
&c), what is (noiv), and needs must 6e, = the not contingent. 

(A, E, | I.) The Contingent (to evdexofievov, contingens, &c), what is 
vnow), but needs-not 6e, = the not necessary. — This is a co-ordinate 
of the last previous, and they contradict each other. 

Discounting, therefore, some ambiguities of a more grammatical inter- 
est (and on which, in these hints, I can not even touch), it is manifest, 
that the Prepositional Modes stand to each other in the formal relations 
of Subordination, Superordination, Co-ordination ; and that following the 
rules of genera and species, their predication falls under common logical 
government. 

Logicians, in this affair, have been guilty of a fivefold abberration. — 
In ihe first place, they ought not to have defiled the purity of their formal 
science with a subject of merely material consideration — a subject to be 
by them discussed, only to be excluded or subordinated. — In the second 
place, they ought not to have dealt, as logical, with what was properly 
of metaphysical, or merely of grammatical, concernment. — In the third 
place, they ought not to have treated, as pertaining to the copida, what 
belongs to the collated terms. — In the fourth place, they ought not to 
■have confused their doctrine by introducing as foreign, special, coniplex, 
and difficult, what admits of reduction to logical precept, common, simple, 
and easy. — In the fifth place, in their enumeration of these modes, they 
ought to have been exhaustive ; they ought not to have omitted the actual 
and its couspecies the potential. 

I should notice, likewise, that logical authors have confused themselves 
and readers, in attempting to expound the mystery of modal inference. 
Yet nothing, when properly evolved, can be simpler or plainer. — De- 
termine the mode of the propositions in question ; and then their conse- 
cution, as modes, is simply the consecution of these modes, as genera and 
species, proceeding (usefully, at least) — in affirmation upward and par- 
tially — in negation downward and totally. See the Tables, pp. 631, 
634. | 

4. — Mr. de Morgan (p. 27.) asserts : — " Sir William Hamilton 
acknowledges, that my own numerically definite system contains 
his system," &c. — To this I answer : 

In the first place, "the system," 1 which here and elsewhere 
Mr. de Morgan fondly calls " his own," belongs to Lambert, by 
whom, if not first found, it was most scientifically and fully de- 

1 Mr. de Morgan loves to talk paternally of logical " Systems ;" and as every new 
error is to him the occasion of a new system, at least of a new nomenclature, no man 
has misconceived, misadopted, and misnamed so many. In his present contribution 
(I can hardly claim acquaintance with his work on Formal Logic), we have baptized, 
or rebaptized, or fathered by him, in Syllogistic alone: — 1°, "The Cumular Sys- 
tem;" 2°, "the Exemplar System;" 3°, the System of Contraries;" 4°, my own 
Numerically Definite System." All mistakes. This we have seen, indeed, of the 
two stili-born, but not anonymous, monstrosities, which stand first; the third is only 
the old doctrine of Infinites, under a new and marvelous misnomer ; while the fourth, 
so far from being a neglected foundling, to be dealt with as his own by the first 
charitable finder, is the legitimate, though puny offspring of an illustrious parentage. 



636 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. (B.) 

veloped ; in like manner, as the ingenious though inadequate 
canon of syllogism, propounded by Mr. de Morgan, in his present 
memoir (see p. 618), is, in all respects, the exclusive property of 
Ploucquet. (Compare : — Lambert's Organon (1764), Dianoiologie, 
I 193, Phsenomenologie, *§ 157, 187-190, 192, 193, 204-211, 
220, &c. : PloucqucVs Methodus demonstrandi Syllogismos, ope 
unius regulse (1763), pp. 2, sq. ; his Methodus calculandi in Lo- 
gicis (1763), H 37, sq. ; and (besides his Fundamenta and Insti- 
tutiones Philosophise Theoreticse), his more matured work, the 
Blementa Philosophise Contemplative? (1778), H 120, sq.) With 
the logical writings of both these mathematical philosophers, Mr. 
de Morgan was acquainted. It would, indeed, have been little 
short of a miracle, had he, ignorant even of the common princi- 
ples of Logic, been able, of himself, to rise to generalizations so 
lofty and so accurate, as are supposed in the peculiar doctrines 
of both the rival Logicians, Lambert and Ploucquet — how useless 
soever these may in practice prove to be. 

In the second place, I never " acknowledged"— I never dreamt 
of "acknowledging," that "the numerically definite system," 
(whoever was its author), " contained," what may properly be 
called " my system." For such is not the case. I certainly, 
indeed, " acknowledged," when I became aware of the fact, that 
the minor doctrine of the ultra-total quantification of the middle 
term, had been anticipated by Lambert, though never designated 
by him, and neglected, not irrationally, by other logicians. This 
doctrine, which was generalized (and first named) by me, inde- 
pendently of any predecessor — which is, in fact, the only formal 
generalization in the " definite" scheme at all, is not, however, 
peculiar to my views, more than any other logical truth. 

5. — But, I must not forget : — Mr. de Morgan (pp. 11-13) has 
displayed a scheme of Syllogistic Notation, which he propounds 
as the same, in principle, with mine — (with the fragment to wit, 
given by Mr. Thomson), but as an improvement. (As for me, 
however, I discover no analogy, and willingly waive all claim to 
the invention). The original he admits to be of the simplest and 
easiest, nor does he pretend, that, in any respect, it is either 
erroneous or inadequate. His own improvement, on the other 
hand, if complexity be perfection, must be pronounced a chef 
(Pmuvre. It accomplishes (if it did accomplish) its purpose, 
through the employment of an apparatus of a five- fold multiplicity. 
A triad of ordinary letters — a polygram of fourteen lines, of three 



ME. DE MORGAN'S NOTATIONS. fi37 

various sorts — eked out, and (it would be) interpreted by nearly 
a dozen arbitrary and unknown signs ; all these are thrown to- 
gether into a kind of heteroclite and heterogeneous circumvalla- 
tion, the lines flanked, on one side, by something in the shape 
of a chevaux-de-frise, horrent with mysterious spicalse — into a 
kind of geometrico-algebraic medley, which Professor de Morgan 
calls " pictorial," but which paints, describes, typifies nothing, 
even imaginable ; and this hybrid and multifarious co-acervation 
of near thirty elements, partly ostensive, partly symbolical, is 
gravely proposed to represent a single syllogism in its simplicity 
— a syllogism, too, intendedly categorical, but which turns out to 
be, in reality, disjunctive. In fact, among the numerous schemes 
(some twenty-eight I know), of logical notation — nay even among 
his own — none was ever yet so decompound, confusive, perverse, 
not to say unintelligible, not to say erroneous. It concentrates 
every vice competent to such representation ; it is at once con- 
torted, operose, and ineffectual. Comparing it with other schemes, 
Mr. de Morgan asserts, this new complexus to be : — " more con- 
venient"— it is beyond human patience, if not simply impossible ; 
" more suggestive" — -it suggests error, when not defying compre- 
hension. We need hardly, therefore, be surprised, that, in the 
end. Mr. de Morgan should actually laud the farrago for express- 
ing diametrically opposite things (" the universality of the sub- 
ject," "the particularity of the predicate,") by the self same 
representation. Apart, indeed, from his general tendency to mis- 
take, and his usual play at cross purposes with thought and lan- 
guage, 1 all Mr. de Morgan's illustrations, whether ostensive or 
symbolic, of logical relations, conduce only to " darken counsel." 
Always arbitrary and ever complex, these are ultimately also 
various. Each new book — new edition — new paper is, in fact, 
a new construction ; and every emendation of a former scheme 
is equally unfortunate with the primary failure. Mr. de Morgan 
is a profound mathematician, and otherwise an able man. But 
philosophically, while strong at complication, his genius seems 
impotent either to simplify or to evolve. Out of mathematics, 

1 Mr. de Morgan professedly identifies — universal, affirmative, conclusive, possible, 
conjunctive, convertible, singular, &c, and particular, negative, inconclusive, impos- 
sible, disjunctive, inconvertible, plural, &c. ; while, knowingly or unknowingly, he 
reverses — definite and indefinite, collective and distributive, contrary and contradictory, 
formal and material, &c. Heretofore, he even confounded terms and propositions, 
the middle and the conclusion of a syllogism. Mr. de Morgan's " System" (of Sys- 
tems) is " the Witches' caldron." 



638 APPENDIX II. LOGICAL. (B.) 

he can add but not subtract, multiply but not divide. Yet if 
wanting, as we must confess, in the art of making the difficult 
easy; no one, it should be proclaimed, is a more accomplished 
adept in the counter craft of making the easy difficult. 

6. — Before concluding: though unable to expose them in articu- 
late detail, I must protest, in general, against various ignorances 
and absurdities, for which Mr. de Morgan (unwittingly always) 
makes me to be responsible. Such are certain doctrines or exam- 
ples laid to my account on pages 2, 12, 20, 21, 29, 30, 35, 36, 
&c. — But now to terminate : 

Apart from the exposition of scientific truths : I have been thus 
copious in refutation, not from any importance I attach to these 
critical objections in themselves, or with reference to myself; but 
mainly from the great respectability of the critic in his peculiar 
department, enabling me to signalize, by another memorable ex- 
ample, how compatible is mathematical talent with philosophical 
inaptitude, nay, how adverse even, are mathematical habits of 
thought, to sound logical thinking. Mr. de Morgan has long 
held highest rank as a British mathematician. Latterly, wish- 
ing to be more, he has ventured to speculate on the theory of 
reasoning: and the " Philosophical Society" of the mathematical 
University of Cambridge, giving his memoirs upon logic an impri- 
matur, have deemed them worthy of publication in their Trans- 
actions. Now the present paper, to say nothing of the others, 
exhibits, from first to last, only the blind confidence (shall I call 
it, or confident blindness?) with which a mathematical author can 
treat a logical subject ; breaking down, though never conscious 
of his falls, in every, even the most rudimentary movement : — 
Author, Memoir, and Society (curiously) concurring to manifest 
anew the real value of the Cambridge crotchet — that " Mathe- 
matics are a mean of forming logical habits, better than Logic 
itself.''' 1 This crotchet is, however, a melancholy absurdity ; for 
it is a crotchet which has confessedly turned that great semi- 
nary of education into a "slaughter-house of intellects" — even 
of lives. It has been said of old — " There is no royal road to 
Mathematics ;" and we have again authority and demonstration, 
that Mathematics are not a road of any kind to Logic, whether 
to Logic speculative, or to Logic practical. A road to Logic, 
did I say ? It is well, if Mathematics, from the inevitability of 
their process, and the consequent inertion, combined with rash- 
ness, which they induce, do not positively ruin the reasoning 



MR. DE MORGAN'S NOTATIONS. 639 

habits of their votary. Some knowledge of their object-matter 
and method is requisite to the philosopher ; but their study should 
be followed out temperately and with due caution. A mathema- 
tician in contingent matter is like an owl in daylight. Here, the 
wren pecks at the bird of Pallas without anxiety for beak or 
talon ; and there, the feeblest reasoner feels no inferiority to the 
strongest calculator. It is true, no doubt, that a power of mathe- 
matical, and a power of philosophical — of general logic, may, 
sometimes, be combined ; but the individual who unites both, 
reasons well out of necessary matter, from a still resisting vigor 
of intellect, and in spite, not in consequence, of his geometric or 
algebraic dexterity. He is naturally strong ; nor a mere cipherer 
— a mere demonstrator : and this is the explanation, why Mr. 
de Morgan, among other mathematicians, so often argues right. 
Still, had Mr. de Morgan been less of a Mathematician, he might 
have been more of a philosopher. And be it remembered, that 
mathematics and dram-drinking tell, especially, in the long run. 
For a season, I admit, Toby Philpot may be the Champion of 
England; and Warburton testifies — "It is a thing notorious, 
that the oldest mathematician in England is the ivorst reasoner 
in it." 

So much for Mathematical Logic ; so much for Cambridge Phi- 
losophy. 



APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. 

(A.) ACADEMICAL PATRONAGE AND REGULATION, IN RE- 
FERENCE TO THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. 

The following is an extract from the " General Report of the 
Commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of Municipal 
Corporations in Scotland, presented to both Houses of Parliament 
by command of his Majesty ;" 1835. Coinciding, as I do, with 
the recommendations of this Report, in so far as they go, and, in 
the prevalent unacquaintance with the subject, they perhaps could 
not go farther ; I may premise, that the experience of the sixteen 
years which has since elapsed tends strongly to confirm, not only 
the expedience, but the urgent necessity of a reform in the Pa- 
tronage and Regulation of the University of Edinburgh. 

I add nothing to what has been said above (p. 345, sq.), as to 
the principles and mode of academical patronage^ but a single 
observation : — that, while the removal of religious disabilities in 
the appointment to lay Professorships, may, in itself, be a meas- 
ure both equitable and advantageous, yet with a board of patrons 
like the Edinburgh Town Council, nothing certainly could be 
anticipated more detrimental than its operation. In truth, so far 
from the chairs being thus thrown open to merit, apart from all 
sectarian considerations, sectarian considerations would prevail 
against merit, far more perniciously than heretofore. For, in that 
event, the various religious persuasions would strain every effort 
to secure an election to the Council of their coreligionists ; 
among these councilors coalitions would be formed and agree- 
ments concluded ; so that, in the end, the academical body 
would show nothing better than a heterogeneous collection of 
obscure sectarian nominees. A repeal of the present tests would 
thus, either finish our civic patronage, or sink our University still 
lower. 

In regard to the administration of this University I would 
remark. — The legislative and executive functions (legally or in 
fact) are here exercised by two bodies — the Town Council and 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL MUNICIPAL COMMISSION. 641 

the Senatus Academicus. But these two bodies are, severally or 
together, incapable of any due performance of these functions. — 
With honorable exceptions of individual members, the Senatus 
Academicus, as a body, is too numerous (32) and too ill chosen, 
too destitute of liberal erudition or of lofty views, and where not 
indifferent or hopeless, too generally beset with private interests 
counter to the general interests of the school and public— to be 
able either rightly to legislate for the University, or (without 
intelligent control) even rightly to administer its laws. — The 
Town Council from its numbers (33), from its relative ignorance 
and incapacity, and from its exposure to all kinds of sinister 
influences, among which not the least dangerous is that of the 
party interests in the professorial body itself — is not less incom- 
petent to these functions, an incompetence of which, to its honor,, 
it seems not altogether unconscious. The consequence of this is, 
that with the exception of occasional fits of spasmodic energy 
from accidental stimuli, the professorial body is left virtually to 
make and to execute the academical laws. One result, of many,, 
is shown in the present state of the Degrees ; which, if they cer- 
tify attendance on certain classes, certify, assuredly, little or no 
proficiency in the graduate. To complain of such abuse, or to 
suggest any means for its correction, would, in the absence of an 
intelligent controlling body, be at present wholly idle. To those 
professors, therefore, who are dissatisfied with the conduct of the 
Senatus Academicus, and not content to co-operate in what they 
feel obliged to condemn ; no other alternative is, in my opinion, 
left, than to retire from any participation in University proceed- 
ings. — The Commissioners thus report: 

" The. opinion that the Edinburgh system of University patronage has 
worked well arises, we conceive, from the want of any tolerable standard 
or example in this country from which to form an estimate of the manner 
in which the duty of patrons of an University ought to be discharged. 

The Town Council of Edinburgh, consisting of thirty-three members, is, 
in our opinion, too large a body to discharge, with advantage, the duties 
of patrons of literary and scientific offices. So great a number can not 
possess that unity of purpose which would enable them to anticipato a. 
canvass, and at once fix on the most eligible person to fill each vacancy. 
Such we consider to be the duly of University patrons, and we esteem the 
allowance of a canvass for an office in the University, however conducted, 
to be in itself an evil. In a body so numerous, divisions are apt to arise, 
which can not fail to obstruct the fair estimate of the merits of rival can- 
didates. But, above all, the feeling of individual responsibility is destroy- 
ed, where a good appointment can reflect little honor, and a bad one ia 
not felt to throw disgrace upon any one elector. 

Ss 



642 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A.) 

Under the former constitution of the Town Council, a great majority 
of the members were usually merchants and tradesmen, but little qualified, 
by education, to be themselves very competent judges of the literary or 
scientific qualifications of others. From that cause also, as well as from 
their number, they were peculiarly open to the influence of personal 
solicitation, and of local prejudice and prepossession. Even under the 
present constitution of the Council, the qualifications which are likely to 
recommend individuals to the choice of their fellow-citizens as Town- 
Councilors are, in most cases, rather those which would fit them for 
taking an active part in the ordinary business of life than such as are 
calculated to render them suitable patrons of an university, and, indeed, 
their competency for the discharge of that particular duty will probably 
be little regarded. The fluctuating nature of the body is besides very 
unfavorable to the steady and consistent administration of this important 
trust ; and the political feelings which are so apt to influence their own 
appointment are but too likely to affect the course of their conduct in 
matters which ought, of all others, to be exempted from their operation. 

Notwithstanding the manifest defects and vices of the system, it musi 
be admitted that many men of distinguished eminence have been placea 
in the chairs of this university, and that it has acquired, and hitherto 
preserved, a respectable character as a seminary of learning and science. 
This, however, must not be attributed to any excellence in the existing 
system of patronage and administration ; but is partly owing to the state 
of medical education in the great universities of England, partly to the 
exclusion of Dissenters from those establishments, and, perhaps, above all, 
to the existence of a system of patronage and management still more ob- 
jectionable in the other universities of Scotland. In the words of one of 
the gentlemen examined, 1 ' it is the greatest possible mistake, though a 
very common one, to suppose that the success of the university has been 
owing to this mode of election. Its chief celebrity has been during the 
last century ; and the rise of Scotland, for the hundred years that suc- 
ceeded the Union, was so irresistible, not only in learning, but in every 
thing, that the greatest abuses might have existed, and did exist, and yet 
the country flourished. I have heard it stated, by the highest persons, 
and in the highest places, that the agricultural and commercial prosperity 
of Scotland was owing to the exclusion of the people from any share in 
the representation ; and no doubt these two things, namely, their exclusion 
and their prosperity, did co-exist ; so did the prosperity of the university 
and the election by the magistrates ; but there was probably no system 
of election that could have been adopted, at that particular period of our 
history, under which many good professors would not have arisen in the 
metropolis.' 'It is a much truer test of the excellence of any elective 
system to look to the number of ill-qualified persons who have been chosen, 
while well-qualified ones have been rejected. A single flagrant case of 
this description shows the true tendency of the system better than many 
right appointments. It would be indelicate to illustrate this view by ex- 
amples ; but I am confident that the facts would amply illustrate and 
condemn the scheme of placing such elections in any body constituted like 
the magistrates of Edinburgh. No one who has lived long here can have 
any difficulty in applying these observations.' 

1 Mr. Solicitor-General (now Lord) Cockburn. 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL MUNICIPAL COMMISSION. 643 

We have not thought it proper to take evidence with regard to particu- 
lar cases of ill-bestowed patronage, as this could not be done without in- 
juring the feelings of individuals, and the admitted and notorious circum- 
stances connected with its administration have appeared to us fully to 
warrant the conclusions to which we have come. 

The cases are very few in which the patrons have made offer of a vacant 
chair to any person, however eminent, who had not solicited their support. 
In no case that has come to our knowledge has the Town Council elected 
a foreigner, or an Englishman ; and the instances are comparatively few 
in which persons, not previously connected with Edinburgh, have been 
successful in obtaining professorships. Candidates, connected politically 
or personally with a prevailing party, have been preferred to others of 
superior qualifications, and good appointments have frequently been carried 
by narrow majorities. By the junction of two parties supporting inferior 
candidates, the best qualified person has been rejected. But the greatest, 
evil of the system is the necessity to which candidates are subjected of 
trying to procure votes by personal canvass. Nor are the electors assailed 
only by the solicitation of the immediate competitors for the vacant office 
and their friends. When the election of a particular candidate for the 
existing vacancy would throw open a desirable office previously held by 
him (as frequently happens in vacancies of medical professorships), the 
influence of all the friends of the expectant, in the remotest degree, is 
brought to bear in their favor. The electors are courted as if they were 
gratuitously conferring a favor, not exercising a trust. It is usually found 
expedient to procure the interference of those to whom they are under 
obligations ; and it is impossible to disguise that other considerations are 
put forward than the merits of the competitors. In the words of a learned 
professor, whose declaration was taken, ' the candidates were compelled to 
stoop to the level of their electors, and there has not been a single instance 
in which, when a corrupt influence has been adequately exerted, the most 
superlative merit, if otherwise unaided, has had any chance, while it has 
often happened that, where merit did actually succeed, success was ob- 
tained by the very narrowest majorities, and only obtained at all by em- 
ploying the same sinister means which would otherwise have been trium- 
phant against it.' — And another professor 1 has observed, ' that the prac- 
tices resorted to, on some occasions, to influence the members of Council, 
are such as must offend every man of feeling and principle.' - - - - 

The Town Council of Edinburgh, as patrons of the university, has been 
found to have the right of regulating the rate of fees — of prescribing the 
course of study required of candidates for degrees — of creating, subdividing, 
and suppressing professorships — and, generally, of directing the internal 
economy of the college. Its interference in these matters is complained 
of by the professors as injudicious and vexatious. We think there can be 
little difference of opinion as to the injurious effects of the internal control 
thus exercised by the Town Council ; and, therefore, whether we be 
justified or not in concluding that the higher branch of patronage, which 
consists in supplying vacant professorships, ought no longer to be intrusted 
to the Town Council of Edinburgh, we are clearly of opinion that there 
is no reason why they should continue to administer this part of the duty 
of patrons, which requires an intimate knowledge of the objects and ne- 

1 Evidence of Dr. Christison. 



644 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A.) 

cessities of the college, and of the progress and comparative advancement 
tot' science and literature in it and other academical institutions, and which 
is more liable than even the higher department to gross and frequent 
abuses. 

The limits of our Commission have precluded us from making any 
inquiry or suggestion regarding that part of the patronage of the universi- 
ties of Scotland which is vested in the Crown, or exercised by the pro- 
fessors of each college; and we are fully aware of the imperfection of any 
measure which would aflect only a portion of the university patronage of 
Edinburgh, and should consider any scheme for the reformation of Scotch 
universities unsatisfactory that did not extend to them all. 

Our inquiries have, however, impressed upon us the urgent necessity of 
a change of system in the management of the university of Edinburgh ; 
and as the delay attendant on a more extended reformation renders expe- 
dient the adoption of a partial measure which may not be inconsistent 
with a general system, if any such should be hereafter adopted for regu- 
lating the patronage and management of all the universities of Scotland, 
we beg leave to recommend — 

1. That a body of five Curators shall be constituted, in whom shall be 
vested the whole patronage and management of the university of Edin- 
burgh, with all the powers at present exercised by the town council in 
that matter. 

2. That each Curator shall hold his office for ten years from the date 
of his appointment, and shall then be re-eligible. 

3. That of these Curators two shall be named by the Crown, two by 
the town council of Edinburgh, and one by the Senatus Academicus. 

4. That the Curators shall not be members either of the Senatus Aca- 
demicus or town council, and that they shall receive no salary or emolu- 
ment whatever. 

In proposing these outlines of a plan for vesting the patronage and 
government of the university of Edinburgh in a board of Curators, we are 
aware of The objections which may be urged against it. Probably no un- 
tried measure could be proposed, to which some objections would not be 
urged. We have had in view the system which has been found advan- 
tageous in the most distinguished foreign universities, and we have en- 
deavored to adopt so much of it as seems to suit the institutions and pecu- 
liar views of this country. We have the less scruple in proposing so entire 
a change, that we do not think the present system of patronage suscepti- 
ble of any effectual reformation ; and we conceive that almost any change, 
which should place it in the hands of a small and responsible body, would 
be of advantage to the university. 

It may be worthy of consideration, whether, on the supplying of each 
vacancy in the university, the Curators should not be bound to lay before 
your Majesty's Government the reasons which have induced them to pre- 
fer the person appointed to the office. This has been suggested to us as 
a useful check on the exercise of their powers : and we are aware that, 
in the most successful foreign universities, the recommendation of the 
Curators, supported by a statement of such reasons, is the foundation of 
the appointment, which flows directly from the Crown. We consider it 
doubtful, however, whether such a precaution is necessary or expedient, 
where the actual and responsible exercise of the duty of patrons is to re- 
main with the Curators." (P. 69, sq.) 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 645 

The preceding recommendations are by a Royal Commission 
of Municipal Inquiry, appointed under a reforming administration; 
but nearly five years previously, that is, in 1830, a Royal Com- 
mission of Visitation, nominated under a conservative cabinet, 
" to inquire into the state of the Universities and Colleges of 
Scotland," had completed its elaborate investigations, and made 
its general and its special Reports. The opinion of both Com- 
missions are entitled to great respect ; for the members of both 
were, in general, persons of high intelligence, and all of laudable 
intentions. The Commissioners of Visitation were not specially 
authorized to interfere with the academical patronage, as estab- 
lished ; certainly, they make no report in regard to the mode or 
modes of appointing Professors. But in matters where the two 
Commissions both report, under external differences an internal 
agreement will be found. Thus, they concur in declaring it in- 
expedient for the interests of education, for the sake of which 
alone Universities are instituted, to leave the power of legislation 
and ultimate control in the hands of the academical teachers; 
and. both, accordingly, recommend, that this function be intrusted 
to a small extra-academical body, " the Board of Curators" of the 
one, " the University Court" of the other. The recommendations 
by the Burgh Commissioners touching the Universities, are only 
incidental to the object of their investigations, and are therefore 
necessarily limited ; whereas it was the primary and special ob- 
ject proposed to the Commissioners of Visitation, to inquire into 
and report concerning, every matter of academical interest. I 
shall now, therefore, proceed, to make a few extracts from the 
General Report, and. the Report relative to the University of Edin- 
burgh, by the latter Commission ; and this on points which were 
beyond the consideration of the former. — And first of a Degree 
in Arts. 

" It has appeared to us to be essentially necessary that the examina- 
tions for Degrees in Arts should be conducted, as at Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, by [sworn] Examiners appointed for the purpose, and not by the 
Professors. 

When the Candidates are examined by the Professors, there is always 
the greatest risk that the Examinations will degenerate into a mere form. 
The qualifications of many will be known to the Professors. The Pro- 
fessors will naturally be disposed to be easily satisfied in regard to the 
qualifications of those who acquitted themselves to their satisfaction as 
Students ; and even if more rigorously conducted, the Examinations will 
naturally be made to correspond to the proficiency acquired in the Classes, 
and confined to the particular topics introduced in their respective Lee- 



640 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A.) 

tures. The character of the Professors will in fact be engaged in the 
success of the Candidate. Each will be examining his own pupils. His 
eminence as a teacher will be interested in the result ; and the necessary 
bias of the mind will be to make the Degree the reward of the exertions 
and progress made in the class. Higher attainments will not be deemed 
necessary, and the Degree would thus soon become merely a reward for 
eminence in the Classes, without requiring greater exertion, or encourag- 
ing greater acquisitions in knowledge. We apprehend that, any approach 
to such a state of things would counteract the objects which we have in 
view, and that the Degree would be so indiscriminately conferred that it 
would never be an object of ambition, or be raised in public estimation. 
The experience which has already occurred as to the Scotch Universities 
demonstrates the truth of these remarks, and affords conclusive reasons for 
apprehending that the value of the Degree will not be raised if the Ex- 
amination of Candidates shall be left in the hands of the Professors. The 
utter contempt in which the Degree of Master of Arts is held in Scotland, 
and the notorious inefficiency of the Examinations under the existing sys 
tem, have appeared to us to require that the Examination of Candidates 
shall be conducted on a different footing. The evidence in regard to the 
mode of conferring Degrees in Arts in Edinburgh and Aberdeen, exhibits 
a striking illustration of the necessity of such a change as we now propose ; 
and we do not think that any impartial observer can fail to acknowledge 
that the degradation in public opinion of the Degrees given by some of the 
Scotch Universities has been the result of the manner in which they have 
been hitherto bestowed. We have felt it to be our duty, therefore, to 
propose that Examiners shall be appointed for the purpose of ascer- 
taining the qualifications of Candidates for Degrees in Arts." (Gen. 
Rep. 43.) 

What the Visitors say of a degree in Arts, and of the radical 
vice of the prevalent system of examination, has been only too 
fully confirmed hy the experience of the twenty years which have 
since elapsed. This degree, they state, was then "utterly con- 
temptihle," and it is utterly contemptible now. In the University 
of Edinburgh, after a temporary expectation of improvement, and 
a sufficient season of trial, the estimate of the " Honor" has 
again justly fallen to the lowest ; for, affording no criterion of 
merit, and lavished upon any dunce who may obtain the favor 
of the individual judges, the " Laurel" is now again principally 
affected by a few humble intellects of the humblest acquirements, 
especially by those resident in England, where a degree in Arts 
is always of a certain reflected estimation. For an Oxford or 
even a Cambridge pass, though it certifies not much, certifies 
always something. 

The system of examination for degrees in Arts, as realized in 
Edinburgh, violates every principle, and concentrates every 
defect. It is carried on, exclusively, by those who have other 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 647 

interests in passing or rejecting, than the competence or incom- 
petence of the candidate ; and every facility, every inducement 
is afforded, to the exercise of partiality. For, 

1. The Professors are the only examiners. 2. The examination 
is strictly private, consisting altogether of written answers to 
questions communicated to the candidate at the time when his 
responses are required. 3. These questions are not previously 
known to, are not proposed by, the Faculty, but remain at the 
discretion of each individual examiner. 4. The answers also are 
limited to the one examiner, who does not communicate them to 
the Faculty. 5. The questions (for the minimum) are often, even 
ludicrously, beyond what ought to be demanded. 6. These are 
sometimes relative to fortuitous subjects treated in the examiner's 
last course of lectures, and such as could only reasonably be pro- 
posed to the auditors of that course. 7. This variation affords 
an unfair advantage to certain individuals, and is otherwise no 
trial whatever of the general competence of candidates. 8. It is 
also looked upon as constraining extra attendance by candidates 
on such last courses. 9. In general, the candidate is not allowed 
to approve his qualifications by his own choice of books ; nor are 
fixed books or classes of books proposed to him for study. 10. 
There is no law, there are no measures for preventing favor or 
disfavor ; and any incapable may be passed, any respectable can- 
didate may be rejected, at the mere will of a majority of any few 
members of the Faculty who may happen to be present at the 
decisive meeting. And so undeserving, in fact, are some of those 
who have actually received the " Honor," that its refusal to any 
becomes thereafter an act of arbitrary injustice. 

All this evinces the necessity of a radical change in the mode 
of examination, if our Degree in Arts should ever rise to value, as 
a testimony even of the lowest proficiency. The plan proposed 
by the Visitors would certainly be a marvelous improvement. 
But I am doubtful (in the circumstances) as to the expediency 
of excluding the Professors from all share in the examination; 
though I have no doubt that the judgment of passing or rejecting 
and of classifying candidates, should be confided solely to a disin- 
terested body, who ought likewise to be, at least, joint examiners 
with the Professors. Many, however, of the worst evils of the 
present system of graduation would be alleviated, were the can- 
didates, even apart from the introduction of such a body : — 1°, 
previously tried by an extra-academical board, as to their mere 



648 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A.) 

fitness to be taken on the academical examination ; 2°, if this 
examination were made public, and consequently, in part at least, 
oral ; 3°, if the subjects were fixed, and an adequate preparation 
in certain books or classes of books made sufficient to qualify for 
every honor ; 4°, if candidates were allowed to give up for exam- 
ination as many books as they could accurately master, and were 
classified in each department according to their proficiency; and 
5" 1 , if every professor, perhaps certain others, were not only de- 
clared entitled but invited to put questions orally in any branch; 
finally, 6°, if the judges were made to act under the obligation of 
an oath. — This plan would at least redeem the Degree in Arts 
from its present merited contempt; it would make it a certificate 
of some significance, rendering the examination also a stimulus 
to study, and an occasion for the manifestation of ability. 

A Degree in Arts is a luxury, and its abuse is of comparative- 
ly little consequence either to the individual or to the public ; a 
Degree in Medicine is a necessity, and its right regulation is of 
the highest importance, both to the worthy graduate's success, 
and to the general welfare. To this therefore I now go on. 

The University of Edinburgh, in its medical department, had 
been latterly in a gradual process of decline ; and the question 
which the Visitors had first and principally to determine was — 
Whether the Medical Doctorate was to be still farther eviscerated 
of all literary qualification, and yet the Degree issued under the 
same name, to be still entitled to its former privileges ? Were 
this to be allowed, intending practitioners would be tempted by a 
more valuable license, at a rate as low as any surgeon's or apoth- 
ecary's company could afford. No doubt, the public would thus 
get only, under a higher name, an inferior order of practitioners, 
and be wholly deprived of its old accomplished physician ; while 
the inferior examining boards would be injured, the medical pro- 
fession in general degraded, and the University at large discred- 
ited — only, a portion of its members reaping, for a time, a person- 
al advantage from the calamitous change. — But to be somewhat 
more particular. 

Universities in general, and the University of Edinburgh in 
particular, were privileged by the State to grant, upon certain 
conditions, a certain kind of liberty to practice Medicine. They 
were privileged to examine, and to authorize candidates for the 
highest branch of the profession, that is as Physicians, but were 
not privileged to grant licenses for the lower departments, that 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 649 

is as Surgeons and Apothecaries. If, therefore, an University 
attempt this, it attempts what it has no right to perform ; while, 
at Ihe same time, by the attempt itself, it not only derogates from 
its own dignity, but commits an act of injustice upon other cor- 
porations, by usurping their peculiar privileges. But worse than 
this : The University of Edinburgh not only usurps what does 
not belong to it; it does not satisfactorily discharge the function 
of those bodies on whose province it encroaches. It is not merely 
superfluous. For, in \ha first place, it does not execute the duty 
of examination by those who have no interest in licensing inca- 
pables, but by those who have. In the second place, it dispenses 
with those branches of liberal education which it was bound to 
insure that all its graduates possessed ; nay, it even dispenses 
with these, to an extent which would be held disgraceful by the 
inferior incorporations which it supersedes. For example : a 
smaller amount and an inferior quality of liberal learning is, in 
Scotland, required to qualify for the highest honors and privileges 
of the profession, than even in Ireland is deemed necessary for 
the very lowest; so that the medical aspirant who finds himself, 
from want of Greek, unable to rise into a Dublin Apothecary, is 
obliged to subside into an Edinburgh Physician. (Ev. I. 218, 
219.) In like manner, the classical acquirements of an Edin- 
burgh Doctor of Medicine (which are wisely not taken upon trust) 
would not enable him to pass before the Military, to say nothing 
of the Naval, Medical Board (Ev. I. 458, 534, 535, 339) ; as 
these Boards, for either service, like the Prussian Government for 
all its lieges, justly place no confidence in academical certificates, 
but examine doctors and no-doctors, indifferently. Thus, from 
want of an academical controlling power, acting for the public 
and University, the public is, as said, deprived of that class of 
approved medical practitioners, to secure which exclusively, this 
and other Universities were relatively privileged ; while our Alma 
Mater, degraded by her members, selling, for their private inter- 
est, her highest medical honors, at a lower literary price than is 
exacted, not only by other academical bodies, but even by the 
inferior licensing incorporations, is, in fact, constrained by her 
own officers to convert her "Seminary of Science" into an "Asy- 
lum of Ignorance," covering the country with her annual issues 
of "graduated dunces" — of "Doctores indocti." In thus reduc- 
ing the standard of medical literary competency far below the 
academical level of England, Ireland, or any other country of 



650 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A.) 

Christendom, the supine or interested regulators of this school 
have, unfortunately, been allowed to accomplish the one natural 
result. Medicine has now ceased in Scotland to be a learned 
profession, and though, even in Scotland, learned medical men 
may still be found, there is here no longer any assurance, not to 
say, of superior erudition, but any guarantee against the lowest 
ignorance, afforded to the public in a medical degree. 

Against the proceedings in this process of abasement, the 
medical interest predominant in the Senatus, though peculiarly 
unqualified to legislate for a University, was not left without 
warning in the reclamations even of the medical professors. The 
late Nestor of the Faculty, Dr. Duncan, senior, foresaw nothing in 
the innovations, but " Edinburgh Degrees being conferred upon 
ignorant empirics." (Ev. I. 219.) Professor Sir (xeorge Ballin.- 
gall thus declares : 

" I can not see the expediency or propriety of granting the ' highest de- 
gree in medicine' at such a limited expense of time and means, as will 
enable the holders of such degree to undersell or even to enter into com- 
petition with the common routiniers of the country. On the contrary, it 
appears to me that it is only by elevating the standard of scientific educa- 
tion in all its branches within the Universities, that we can hold out any 
thing distinctive or desirable in a University education, or that we can 
expect to keep that vantage ground which these institutions have hitherto 
held in public esteem." (Ev. I. 268.) 

Enlightened views in regard to the necessity of classical and 
philosophical accomplishment in the medical graduate were like- 
wise held by other distinguished medical professors, as Dr. John 
Thomson, Dr. James Hamilton, and Mr. James Russell — to say 
nothing of every medical and surgical authority out of the Uni- 
versity. (Ev. I. 455, sq., 307, 308, 310, 312, 288.) But passing 
to the opinion of other members of the Senatus, we find the 
Faculty of Arts in 1824 thus formally reporting : 

" No higher qualifications are expected from the Physician [who prac- 
tices on an academical degree] than from the Surgeon [who does not]. 
Hence it has happened, that the Physician has sunk in the scale of gen- 
eral estimation, ivhile the Surgeon has risen to his level. The Faculty 
can perceive no other plan more effectual, none more generally expected 
by the public, than by enlarging the qualifications of the Physician, by 
obliging him to obtain that literary and scientific education which will 
give grace and dignity to his medical acquirements, and which appears 
essentially necessary to every one obtaining the highest honors an Uni- 
versity has to bestow." 1 (Ev. I. 144.]) 

1 The Faculty, however, annulled all attention to the truth which they thus spoke, 
by requesting that a compulsory attendance on their own classes in a University should 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 651 

What is thought, and justly thought, upon the subject by the 
public, and intelligent English public, appears from the plain 
spoken evidence of an able and well-informed witness, of whom 
the Visitors do not communicate the name. It is well worthy 
of the reader's serious attention ; and the result is, that the 
Edinburgh medical degree was then regarded in England as no- 
thing else (alas ?) than a fraud upon the nation. And what, 
now ? 

"It is argued — that the demand for the highest rank in Medicine is 
limited, and that to many the possession of it is of no value. Granted. 
But is that a reason for increasing the supply ? Is that a reason for 
sending forth Doctors by hundreds every year ? Is it not unreasonable to 
argue — that because the demand for medical men of the highest rank is 
limited, the University of Edinburgh ought, therefore, to have the privi- 
lege of conferring that rank, with a facility that multiplies the number 
beyond the demand, and degrades the distinction it is meant to convey? 
One would suppose, from this line of argument, that Edinburgh College 
had been so chary of the honors it has to bestow, that, small as is the ex- 
isting demand, it was not effectually supplied from Scotland. But the 
case is precisely the reverse. The complaints against the Scotch Univer- 
sities are — that they supply a greater number of Doctors than the wants 
of society require — that they manufacture a baser article than Oxford and 
Cambridge, affix the same stamp to it, and introduce it in such quantities 
into the market, that the whole cargo is depreciated — and when their 
coinage happens to be of sterling worth, that its value is lessened by the 
plated and Brummagem articles that have issued from the same mint. 

To what extent the demand of higher qualifications for medical 

honors at Edinburgh College might affect the pecuniary interests of its 
Professors, I am not prepared to say ; but I am sure it would raise the 
value of their Diplomas, and settle beyond a doubt the real merit of their 
School of Medicine. I am far from wishing to underrate the Edinburgh 
Professors ; but 1 must be permitted to remark, that under their present 
system of conferring degrees, the number of students that flock to them for 
instruction, is no more a test of the value of their lectures, than the resort 
of young couples to Gretna Green is a proof of the piety of the Blacksmith 

who gives them his nuptial benediction. But though some men go 

to Edinburgh in order to obtain a rank in their profession, which they could 
not otherwise acquire, and to which from the deficiencies of their education, 
and the mediocrity of their attainments, they have no right to pretend, the 
great majority of students go to learn their profession ; and where they are 

be the test of the literary competence " indispensable" in the medical graduate. They 
open their petition by saying : — " They feel it to be a duty they owe to the University 
and the public, not to allow the present occasion to pass without endeavoring to render 
the degree more respectable and more dignified than it has hitherto been ; and now that 
the Scnatus, in their boundless liberality, have agreed to accept of certificates of attend- 
ance on self-constituted teachers, they will not, it is presumed, be less indulgent to the 
radical professors in Universities, who were originally constituted to lay the founda- 
tions of general knowledge, and to prepare the youth for all the learned and liberal 
professions," &c, &c. (Ev. I. 145.}) 



6b'Z APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A.) 

well taught, there they will go, whether they expect to he decorated with 
degrees or not. If the Edinburgh Professors do their duty, and in compari- 
son with other teachers are duly qualified 1o a fiord instruction, they may 

lose graduates, but they will not lose students by the change. On 

the supposition that a higher and better educated class of medical practi- 
tioners is wanted, to a certain but to a limited extent, we are asked — How 
is that class to be supplied ? What sort of education is to be required from 
those who aspire to it ? Ought there to be a different standard in Scotland 
from that which is used in England ; ought, in short, the Scotch Profess- 
ors to suffered at their discretion, to enrol natives of Lilliput and Brob- 
dignag in the same regiment, and send them with certificates to Lon- 
don testifying that they are of the same size, and qualified to serve in the 
same company?" — (Ev. I. 145.]) 

And Edinburgh complains, that her (popTifcol are not admitted 
among the ^apievre^ of the London College ! — But we have been 
delayed too long from the opinion of the Visitors themselves. 

" On the subject of the Preliminary Education which should be required 
of candidates lor Degrees in Medicine, Ave have had much deliberation, 
and received a great deal of evidence. It has appeared to us to be a 
matter of great importance, that the persons who are to practice Medicine 
should be men of enlightened minds, accustomed to exercise their intel- 
lectual powers, and familiar with habits of accurate observation and 
cautious reflection ; and that they should be possessed of such a degree 
of literary acquirement as may secure the respect of those with whom 
they are to associate in the exercise of their profession. We therefore 
thought it an indispensable qualification for a Medical Degree that ihe 
individual should have some reasonable acquaintance with the Greek and 
Latin languages, and with Mathematics and Philosophy; and though 
strong doubts have been expressed by many of the Medical Professors as 
to ihe expediency of rendering this an essential condition, from an appre- 
hension that it might prevent many persons from taking the benefit of the 
instruction in Medical Science to be obtained in the Universities, we have 
found our opinion on this point confirmed by every one of the eminent 
Physicians and Surgeons, not belonging to the Universities, whom we 
examined, as well as by some of the Medical Professors themselves ; while 
we have also been fully satisfied, by a due consideration of the matter 
itself, and of the evidence before us, that there is no solid ground for the 
apprehensions entertained." (Gen. Rep. 56.) 

Those of the medical professors interested in the higher num- 
ber and lower quality of degrees were, however, averse from such 
preliminary discipline ; and the following is the comment by the 
"Visitors on the attempted reasoning of these professors. — And 
first as to the inutility, maintained, of liberal learning for a phy- 
sician : 

" The amount of this would seem to be, that literature is a positive evil 
to a Physician ; that it unfits him for the habits and state of mind which 
he ought to cultivate ; and that it will be an obstacle to his success in 
practice. It is difficult to conceive that the learned Medical Faculty 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY" VISITATION. 653 

could have intended to go so far as this ; but it is plain that there is much 
fallacy in the assertions, lor it can scarcely be called reasoning, which they 
here adduce. It is unquestionably true, that if a man were to devote 
himself, in the manner stated, to Literature and Science, making these 
the chief, or almost the exclusive objects of his pursuit ; he would not be 
a good Physician : but this is not at all what is intended ; the sole object 
being, that a Physician should have that liberal education which is im- 
plied in a course of University attendance. By acquiring this, the mind 
would be invigorated for any intellectual pursuit, and it could superinduce 
no habit disqualifying for the activity of exertion, or for mingling in so- 
ciety as a medical man must do. Such education also, it is to be remem- 
bered, would be completed, or nearly so, before medical pursuits com- 
menced, certainly long beibre practice was attempted, and would not 
therefore have the eflect which is here supposed." (Rep. Ed. 187.) 

Next, as to. the effect, argued by the Medical Faculty, that an 
elevation in the standard of Doctoral competency would he fol- 
lowed by a reduction in the number of Doctors. On this the 
Visitors remark : 

" It is thus represented, that because, which is undoubtedly true, there 
are men who practice with little or no literary attainment, the general 
tone of the profession should be lowered, or at least that no attempt should 
be made to elevate it, because the expense being thus increased, the num- 
ber of enlightened Graduates would bo diminished, and practice would 
be surrendered, much more than it is, to those of inferior qualifications. 
But this reasoning is far from being conclusive There is, it is to be 
lamented, too great a disposition in many to prefer quackery to sound 
Medical Science ; and by those who do so, the literature of medical men 
will not be held in much estimation. But as no one would contend that, 
on this account, quackery should be preferred to knowledge, upon the 
same ground it would seem that want of literature should not be preferred 
to learning. In fact, the preparatory education for which some contend, 
does not interfere in the slightest degree with the medical ; it only tends 
to make the practitioner a more enlightened man.'.' (Rep. Ed. 188.) 

For myself, I am however inclined to think, that were the De- 
gree in Medicine raised in Edinburgh to its ancient and legitimate 
literary eminence (though the profession might then attract many 
whom it does not now), the number of Edinburgh graduates 
would be greatly decreased. But so it ought. The present pro- 
portion is, in truth, not honorable to the University, and useless, 
nay pernicious to the public. The effect, I repeat, is — to deprive 
the nation of what a University was privileged to secure — an 
ascertained class of liberally educated physicians ; for thus the 
highest degree is reduced to a level with the lowest license, the 
only difference being, that more has been paid for the higher 
name, and that the larger price has gone into different pockets. 
By the reduction of the physician to an unlearned practitioner, 



654 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A.) 

it is not Medicine only, as a liberal study, which has suffered ; 
it is not only that the bodies of the lieges have been turned over 
to the murderous confidence of ignorant dogmatics (See above 
p. 252). The learning of its medical profession is a foot in the 
tripod of a country's erudition ; and this foot being broken, the 
whole tripod, that is the whole professional and liberal learning 
of a country, loses a principal support. (See above, p. 330, sq.) 
The Visitors then proceed to adduce, in support of a liberal 
education in the medical graduate, the evidence of the three phy- 
sicians, at the time, of the highest professional reputation in this 
city — Dr. John Thomson, Dr. Abercrombie, and Dr. Davidson. 
The first two are well known as authors ; I therefore quote only 
the opinion of the last, whom all who knew, admired, not only 
for his rare medical skill, but for his great general talent and 
most varied acquirements. 

" The first point I would remark on is Preliminary Education. The 
first subject that attracted my attention, in reflecting upon the Education 
of Medical Graduates, was that of Preliminary Instruction, for which but 
very slight provision is made in the Statuta Solennia of this University, an 
acquaintance with Latin being only required ; while the means, till lately, 
employed to ascertain the proficiency of the Students, even in that lan- 
guage, do not appear to be the best suited for the purpose. I can not help 
thinking that more extensive literary and scientific education should be re- 
quired from those who mean to take out a Medical Degree, as extensive 
as can reasonably be expected in young men of seventeen or eighteen, at 
which age the study of Medicine will probably commence. I conceive 
that the branches of Preparatory Education should be Greek, Latin, French, 
and Mathematics ; while Natural Philosophy, Logic, Moral Philosophy, 
and Natural History, may be acquired, either before beginning the study 
of Medicine, or may be attended to along with the Medical Classes. I 
presume that, though Natural Philosophy, Logic, and Ethics, will proba- 
bly be studied, either at this or some other University, Languages, with 
Mathematics, may be acquired wherever such instruction can be procured ; 
and that the proficiency of the Students in those branches of knowledge 
may be certified either by Diplomas, Certificates from respectable Schools 
or Academies, or by their undergoing an Examination by the Professors 
of this University. If I were asked the reasons for recommending a more 
extensive Preliminary Education, for Medical Graduates, I should be puz- 
zled, not from the difficulty of discovering them, but from the fear of that 
ridicule which attaches itself to advancing arguments in favor of an opin- 
ion which is so manifestly correct as to require no support. A prelimin- 
ary Scientific and Literary education appears to be the best, if not the only 
proper preparation of the youthful mind for entering upon the study of so 
extensive and difficult a subject as Medicine, where an immediate demand 
is made for close attention, much discrimination, and an acquaintance with 
many subjects not strictly Medical. Experience has convinced me that 
those Students whose minds have been previously cultivated, make the 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 655 

most steady and rapid progress in their new pursuits, which are much less 
difficult to them than to those who are totally unscientific and deficiently 
educated. I know, besides, that it is a common subject of regret among 
most Physicians, as it is with myself, that they did not make use of youth, 
leisure, and opportunity, in laying a broad and deep foundation of general 
knowledge, on which to rest their Medical acquirements. I may be per- 
mitted to add, that were I not convinced of the necessity for a liberal edu- 
cation, preliminary to the study of Medicine, I should surrender my doubts 
to the authority of much wiser men, in England, Ireland, France, Ger- 
many, and Italy, by whose influence it has been established in the Medical 
Schools of those countries ; nor should I be inclined to submit less willing- 
ly to the decision of the Faculty of Arts in this College, who strongly rec- 
ommended a preparatory education for the Medical Graduates, in a Memo- 
rial presented, I believe, to the Senatus Academicus (which I had the ad- 
vantage of perusing). A competent knowledge of Greek appears to be 
requisite for the Medical Students, from the fact that much of the language 
and terminology of Anatomy, Medicine, Botany, &c, is derived from that 
language, not only from the Greeks having been our earliest masters in 
many of the sciences, but also for the sake of convenience, from such terms 
being short, expressive, and explanatory, and ill supplied by the tedious 
circumlocutions, of modern tongues. With these terms, of constant occur- 
rence both in lectures and in books, the uneducated Student can not fail to 
be puzzled ; and he must either content himself with ignorance of their 
import, or bestow much time, and suffer no very agreeable fatigue, in hunt- 
ing out their etymology. Independently of all these reasons, it appears to 
me, at least unseemly, that the members of a learned profession should be 
ignorant of the language in which those wrote who were their original in- 
structors, and whose works are still, after the flight of ages, by no means 
unworthy of serious and attentive perusal. It seems, moreover, peculiarly 
unfitting that the Magnates of the Medical Profession (those who have 
acquired either real or imaginary dignity from Degrees, to which some 
privileges belong), should not possess the standard education of gentlemen, 
nor be able to take that station in society which a cultivated intellect is 
entitled to assume." — (Rep. Ed. 180, Ev. I. 503.) 

The Visitors then go on to say : 

(1 There is much other evidence to the same effect ; but it is sufficient 
to point out the leading views upon the subject ; the particular grounds 
of opinion it would be impossible, within the limits of this Report, to detail. 
The conclusion to be deduced seems unquestionably to be decidedly in 
favor of a superior Preliminary Education to that tvhich is noiv re- 
quired. This can be obtained, apparently, without the slightest hard- 
ship : the more elementary parts of it being procured previously to the 
commencement of medical studies, and the more advanced durinsf the 
prosecution of those studies ; an arrangement which it is in evidence could 
without difficulty be made. It would thus not be essential that there 
should be the Degree of Master of Arts, but merely that there should be 
an acquaintance with the learned languages and other brandies of knowl- 
edge ; and by combining with the Medical Classes what can be acquired 
only at a University, the residence in Edinburgh would not be prolonged. 
The character of the Medical Proiession would thus be much raised, and 
provision made, as has been already slated, for spreading throughout the 



6o6 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A.) 

country enlightened and well-informed men, who might be instrumental 
in increasing to a great degree the advantages to be derived from social 
intercourse, while they would have access to sources of enjoyment pecu- 
liarly valuable in the sequestrated situation in which many Medical Prac- 
titioners must spend the great part of life." — (Rep. Ed. 189.) 

To conclude this part of the subject : 

We have here two diametrically opposite opinions. On the 
one side, against the demand of a liberal accomplishment in the 
physician, we have six out of the seven holders of an academical 
monopoly, a body strongly and exclusively interested in the 
creation of medical graduates, at the lowest qualification, and in 
the greatest number. On the other side, we have the authority 
of all Universities out of Scotland, and of the ivhole disinterested 
intelligence, in this and every other country, professional and 
non-professional, intra and extra-academical. The Medical Fac- 
ulty — the monopolizing body — -of this University, spoke, I doubt 
not, only as it thought. But as the opinions of men in general, 
are, in general, only a reflex of their interests ; so it is difficult 
even for a mind, however vigorous and independent, to resist the 
magnetic influence, as it were, of the ordinary minds with which 
it acts in consort: and thus is to be explained, the otherwise in- 
explicable fact, that men of high intelligence and the most upright 
intentions are so often found engaged in the championship of meas- 
ures, which, had they acted of and from themselves, they would 
intellectually and morally contemn. In fact, from individual mem- 
bers of the Medical Faculty, and their personal accomplishments, 
might be drawn a signal manifestation of the fallacy of its con- 
junct Report. But this is needless. As Hobbes has well observed : 
— Were it for the profit of a governing body, that the three angles 
of a triangle should not be equal to two right angles, the doctrine 
that they w r ere, would, by that body, inevitably be denounced, 
as false and pernicious. The best, certainly the most curious, 
examples of this truth, are, indeed, to be found in the History 
of Medicine — and of medicine, too, when yet a learned and phi- 
losophical profession. For this, on the one hand, is nothing else 
than a marvelous History of Variations: and, on the other, only 
a still more marvelous history of how every successive variation 
has, by medical bodies, been first furiously denounced, and 
(though always laughed at by the wiser wits) then bigotedly 
adopted. Homoeopathy and the Water Cure are, now and here, 
blindly anathematized as heretical ; in the next generation, it is 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 65* 

not improbable, that these same doctrines may be no less blindly- 
preached, as exclusively orthodox. — Such is poor human nature ! 
Such is corporate, such is medical authority ! 

The next point is the Examination for medical degrees. On 
this the Visitors thus report : 

" The Examination for Degrees in Medicine have hitherto been con- 
ducted by the Members of the Medical Faculty, exclusive of the Professors 
of the Medical Classes recently instituted by the Crown, and each Candi- 
date has been required to pay a sum of Ten Guineas, which is divided 
equally among the Examining Professors. 

" We are of opinion that this system is liable to very serious objections. 
The emoluments of the Professors who examine ought not to depend on the 
number of Candidates for Degrees. At present the fees drawn by the 
several Professors from this source are very considerable, in consequence 
of the great number of Candidates ; and it appears from the evidence that 
the number of Degrees conferred has been continually increasing during 
many years, in a proportion much greater than corresponds to the rate of 
increase in the number of Students attending the Medical School of Edin- 
burgh. 

" No explanation has been given of this extraordinary increase in the 
number of Degrees, and we are satisfied that it can not be accounted for 
from any external causes. We are of opinion that the present system has 
a necessary tendency to render the Examinations less strict than they 
might otherwise be, and practically to laiver the standard of qualifications 
in the estimation of the Faculty. It is, besides, scarcely to be doubted, 
that there must be a natural reluctance in Professors to reject Candidates, 
to many of whom the fees paid to the Examiners may be a very serious 
sacrifice. Although most of the Professors in the Medical Faculty enter- 
tain opinions adverse to any extension of the subjects of examination, and 
are strongly impressed with the idea that the importance and value of 
the University as a School of Medicine ought to be estimated by the num- 
ber of the Degrees annually conferred, an entirely different opinion has 
been strongly expressed by all the other Physicians and Surgeons whom 
we have examined, being persons very extensively engaged in the practice 
of their profession. It should seem to us, that the value of the Degree 
must bear a proportion to the nature of the qualifications required for it ; 
and we have already observed, that it does not appear to us, that either 
the reputation of the University as a School of Medicine, or the number 
of Students resorting to it for instruction, will be regulated merely by the 
number of those who may obtain Degrees. It has never been found, in 
regard to objects of such importance in professional pursuits, that the risk 
of failure has tended in any degree to diminish the number of those en- 
deavoring to qualify themselves for attaining them." — (Gen. Rep. 64.) 

What is here said by the Visitors is most true. 

As to their first observation : — Nothing can be more inconsistent 
with every principle of academical policy than to make it the 
private interest of an examiner to be remiss or perverse in the per- 
formance of his public duty. But this is here done, and done, 

Tt 



658 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL, (A.) 

among others, in three ways. For, in the circumstances of the 
Edinburgh medical examinations : it is, 1°, made directly the 
interest of the examiner, to pass as many, to reject as few candi- 
dates, as possible ; 2°, it is made indirectly his interest, to allow 
extra attendance on his class to compensate for deficiency in the 
examination ;' and 3°, he is enabled to exercise with impunity, 
his favor or disfavor in the passing or rejection of any candidate. 
— Theoretically, this examination is thus utterly vicious ; neither 
is theory here contradicted by experience. 3 

Nor is their second observation less correct. As to the large- 
ness of the relative number of Medical Degrees granted by the 
University of Edinburgh : — this, so far from being, in my opinion, 
matter of honor and satisfaction, should, in the circumstances, 
cause only humiliation and regret- For it exhibits nothing but 
decline ; — decline in the number of medical students — decline in 
the requirements of examination — decline in the qualification of 
the candidates. Comparing the first decade of the present half 
century with the last : — we find the medical students in the former 
nearly doubling in number those in the latter ; whereas . the 
medical degrees are, in proportion to the students, nearly thrice 
as numerous, being, in the former, somewhat less than one to 
fifteen, in the latter, somewhat less than one to five. And this 
too, though in the former, only a three years medical study in 
any University was required ; while in the latter, such a study 
during/o«r years, and one at least in the University of Edinburgh, 
became necessary. Now what does this evince ? — Firstly, Thai; 
the University is trading on its former credit, a trade which if 
suffered to continue must end in a bankruptcy of that credit itself. 
For, secondly, its degrees are now granted to an inferior and more 
numerous order of students ; which, thirdly, appears, because the 
proportional increase has taken place along with, and in conse- 
quence of, a diminution in the requirement of literary and liberal 
qualification in the examinee ; while, fourthly, it is manifest, 



1 It is well known, that the power of medical examination secures attendance on the 
class of the examiner, even though such attendance be not required for a Degree. 
Hence the anxiety to be admitted a medical examiner in this University, howbeit with- 
out a participation in the direct emoluments of the labor. 

4 The late Professor Leslie, in his evidence taken by the Visitors, and speaking of 
the medical department of the University of Edinburgh, says : — " It is too severe a 
trial on human nature to have one's duty set in direct opposition to his interests. No 
real reform in the curriculum can ever be effected but by the application of extrinsic 
and paramount authority." — (Ev. I. 155.) 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 659 

that students now resort to this medical school, chiefly for the 
sake of its facile and unlettered Doctorate, for, as four years of 
medical lectures in a University are here necessary for the degree, 
the whole number of medical pupils in attendance on this Uni- 
versity is little more than four times the number of the gradu- 
ates whom it annually turns out. 

It thus appears that the students in medicine are attracted to 
Edinburgh chiefly by the bribe of its degree ; and that at least 
the English candidates are almost exclusively those who are 
either too illiterate to satisfy the liberal requirements even of 
the London University (for Oxford and Cambridge are here out 
of question), or professionally too incompetent to stand the test 
of the impartial examination there organized. When the literary 
qualifications for our Scottish medical degrees are raised to a level 
even with the lowest standard of other British Universities, and 
when our Scottish academical examinations are rendered un- 
biassed criteria of professional competency ; then will the number 
of our medical graduates afford an index of the relative eminence 
of our medical school ; — but not till then. Should, matters go on 
as hitherto ; if, now there be no certainty, so, soon there will be 
no probability, that even the "small Latin and no Greek," still 
nominally required, will be furnished by the medical candidate 
and exacted by the medical examiner. " "lis Latin, and can not 
be read ;" this which the late Dr. Gregory predicted would soon 
be the rule in his profession, is certainly no longer the exception : 
nay, even English grammar and spelling are, by the confession 
of Edinburgh Medical Professors, luxuries, but not necessities, 
for those whom our Universities proclaims to the world, as merit- 
ing and having received her " Highest Honors in Medicine." 
Latin is now, as Greek was before 1823 ; — it is nominally re- 
quired for an Edinburgh medical degree, and an examination 
as to sufficiency, is left to the Medical Faculty. But in 1826, 
scarcely three years after Greek was dropped from the Edinburgh 
requirements for a physician, we have the highest authority in 
that Faculty declaring, "that not one medical man in five hundred 
reads Greek." And yet only three short years before, the Medi- 
cal Faculty was professedly reading and examining in Greek, 
nay certifying to the sufficiency of all its graduates, in the lan- 
guage of Hippocrates — the language now authoritatively declared 
(what was long known in fact), to be professionally obsolete. 
Such, however, is a specimen of free professorial examination. 
Again : in 1825, the necessity of speaking and of understanding 



660 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A.) 

spoken Latin was formally taken off both Professor and Student ; 
a candidate's Latinity was left hereafter to be tried by the same 
examiners as was, heretofore, his knowledge of Grreek ; and now, 
after the operation not of three but of nearly thirty years — now, 
after reducing the examination from the level of a third, to a 
level of all the students, how many are there — in five hundred 
medical graduates of Edinburgh, let us say — who read Latin ? 
In fact, though not without advantages, in certain respects, this 
measure has left us no security, that either medical graduate or 
medical professor, should henceforward be able to make any use 
of the language of the learned — the language in which nineteen 
in the score of medical notabilities have been written. And 
from the illiterate and nameless multitude of this fallen and fall- 
ing profession, the courted, canvassed, cajoled, concussed electors 
— the incompetent crowd (not certainly without its competent 
individuals also), to whom has been abandoned the patronage of 
this University, are still left (apart from occasional notoriety of 
merit) to nominate, by chance, favor, or intrigue, among others, 
its medical professors ; and these medical professors, now consti- 
tuting the predominant influence in the Senatus Academicus, 
take upon them, and are quietly allowed, to administer, accord- 
ing to their lights, the affairs of this intended school of learning, 
and to lavish for their personal interest, and not for the common 
good, trusts fondly confided to the Senatus, when the Senatus 
was still, comparatively, a learned, intelligent, and well-balanced 
body. Indeed, if the law do not avert the evil, the Reid Trust, 
instead of a resource toward the great ends of the University — of 
the teachers not more than of the taught — seems destined to be 
degraded into a fund for reckless litigation, into a fund for the 
private profit of the trustees, and medical trustees, in particular 
(See p. 381.) 

The history of Universities — in truth, of all human institutions, 
lay or clerical, proves by a melancholy experience, that semi- 
naries founded for the common weal, in the furtherance of sound 
knowledge, are, if left to themselves — if left without an external 
and vigilant, an intelligent and disinterested supervision, regularly 
deflected from the great end for which they were created, and 
perverted to the private advantages of those through whom that 
end, it was confidently hoped, would be best accomplished. And 
this melancholy experience is, though in different forms, almost 
equally afforded in all our older British Universities ; for all of 
these the State has founded and privileged, but over none has it 



REPORT OF THE ROYAL UNIVERSITY VISITATION. 661 

ever organized any adequate controlling power. And what is 
the consequence ? "What is their condition ? What ought they 
to be, and what are they ? Corrupt all ; — all clamant for reform. 
But unless the reform come from without, we need not, in any 
University, have any expectation of a reform coming from with 
in. Left to itself, there is no redemption ; 

" Ipsa sui merces erit, et sine vindice praeda." 

Our only hope, a hope, indeed, long deferred, is a reform from 
without — from above — from the Supreme Civil Power. In re- 
gard to Edinburgh, it would be peculiarly simple to expect a 
correction of the evils prevalent in that University, from the 
bodies — either that in which the corruption has originated, or that 
by which it has been tolerated, or rather — we should say in 
charity — not observed. It would, indeed, be positively foolish to 
call to the Senatus Academicus — the Senatus as now constituted, 
— " Arise ! awake /" It would be more rational to invoke even 
the Town Council ; but if the State do not interfere, then this 
University must, with others, abide the alternative — " be for ever 
fallen /" Surely, however, the State can not always issue costly 
Commissions, and yet, never afterward heed their recommenda- 
tions. In the cases of Oxford and Cambridge, reform may indeed 
be difficult ; but in the case of Edinburgh, nothing could be more 
easy. In fact, the most essential improvements are in general 
manifest, and even urged in the Reports of the two Commissions ; 
and these, we may now confidently hope, will not long remain 
neglected, seeing that Government seems seriously engaged on 
an inquiry into the English Universities. 

But I have dwelt too long upon this subject, and shall only 
add : — that the experience of Edinburgh, like the experience of 
every other University in which the same practice has been pur- 
sued, proves, that an examination by professors exclusively — by 
all the professors of a faculty 1 — and by professors left to their 

1 When limited to a few, responsibility is concentrated ; but when (as now in Edin- 
burgh), the right of examination, and consequently the benefit of an indirect compul- 
sion on attendance, is conceded to all the members of this Faculty, all become inter- 
ested in certain measures, responsibility is attenuated to a minimum, and the whole 
body does, what a part of it would not be bold enough to attempt. Since the previous 
sheet was printed, above four months ago, I see that the medical examiners have been 
publicly accused of rejecting a candidate, not for incompetence, but on the confessed 
ground that he was supposed favorable to a medical theory, rising dangerously in 
opinion, and not in unison with the medical theory of his examiners. On such a step 
— such an injustice — such an absurdity, the old sectional examiners would not have 
ventured. If the charge be well founded, an Edinburgh medical graduate may now 
be an ignorant, unable to spell his mother tongue, but must not be a proficient, pro- 



662 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (A.) 

own discretion, and without even the obligation of oath, statute 
or publicity, is utterly worthless, as a criterion of competency in 
the candidate for an academical degree. "Without entering on 
details, I would only say in general, that to redeem the Edin- 
burgh medical degree, even to respectability, there are required 
the three following conditions : 

1°. An extra-professorial examination, to ascertain whether the 
candidate possess the general literary and scientific knowledge 
necessary for any liberal profession. 

2°. An examination, either wholly extra-professorial, or, at 
least, with extra-professorial judges (who should also be examin- 
ers), to ascertain the professional qualifications of the candidate. 

3°. The examiners and judges : — to be adequate to their func- 
tions ; to act by rule ; publicly, as far as possible ; and, now as 
formerly, here as elsewhere, under the obligation of a solemn 
oath. 

These are the requisites of mere respectability ; but were the 
candidates impartially and ably classified on a sufficient standard, 
the examination might be raised to a higher value. 

The recommendation now made to introduce other examiners 
for a degree beside the academical lecturers, is no anomaly, is no 
innovation. It is, in fact, a return to principle — to the custom 
of all academical antiquity, a return even to the practice of the 
University of Edinburgh itself, to wit, in its first bestowal of 
medical degrees. Then, the doctors of the Edinburgh College of 
Physicians were called in ; indeed, the graduation fee which has 
since been left to the " Medical Faculty" of the University, be- 
longed to the Library, and was thence taken, to bestow it on 
these extra-academical examiners, in compensation of their non- 
official trouble. — I may add, that had the Town- Council, in their 
recent regulation touching the medical degrees of this University, 
limited the qualifying attendance to the courses given by medical 
graduates, and more especially by Edinburgh medical graduates, 
there could not possibly have been any valid doubt with regard 
to the legal competency of such regulation, which would, in 
fact, have been only a step toward a state of true academical 
legality. 

fessing to think for himself. So certain also are now the opinions of a majority 
touching the very practice, and in the very body, where, heretofore, medical skepticism 
was always in proportion to medical wisdom ! Our Gregorys and Thomsons — what 
would they now say to this 1 See p. 252, note. 



APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. 

(B.) THE EXAMINATION AND HONORS FOR A DEGREE IN 
ARTS, DURING CENTURIES ESTABLISHED IN THE UNI- 
VERSITY OF LOUVAIN. 

I have previously referred (p. 403) to this Appendix, for a 
statement in regard to the examination for degrees by the Uni- 
versity of Louvain, in its Faculty of Arts ; which, though over- 
looked by all academical historians, is, I think, the best example 
upon record of the true mode of such examination, and, until 
recent times, in fact, the only example in the history of Univer- 
sities worthy of consideration at all. And as I shall have occa- 
sion to make a reference to this examination, from the Appendix 
upon Oxford, it may be convenient to insert here, what I should 
otherwise have postponed. 

The University of Louvain, long second only to that of Paris 
in the number of its students and the celebrity of its teachers, 
and more comprehensive even than Paris in the subjects taught; 
was for several centuries famed, especially, for the validity of its 
certificates of competency — for the value of its different degrees. 
It is recorded by Erasmus as a current saying, " that no one" can 
graduate in Louvain without knowledge, manners, and ageP 
But among its different degrees, a Louvain promotion in Arts was 
decidedly pre-eminent ; because, in this Faculty, the principles 
of academical examination were most fully and purely carried 
out. I am acquainted, I think, with all the principal documents 
touching this illustrious school ; and beside the Privilegia, or 
collection of statutes, &c. (1728), possess the relative historical 
works of Lipsius (1605), of Grrammaye (1607), of Vernulseus 
(1627 and 1667), of Golnitz (1631), of Valerius Andreas (1636 
and 1650), of the Zedlerian Lexicon (1738), and of Reiffenberg 
(1829, sq.) But strange to say, I have found no articulate ac- 
count of its famous examinations, except in the Academia Lov- 
aniensis of Vernulaeus ; and from that book, with a short pre- 
liminary extract from the Fasti of Andreas, I translate the 
following passages. 

Valerius Andreas. — " Philosophy, from the very commence- 



664 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (B.) 

ment of the University, was wont to be taught, partly in private 
houses, partly in ' the Street* or public School of Arts (where, 
indeed, the prelections of two chairs in that Faculty, to wit, 
Ethics and Rhetoric, are even now publicly delivered), the Mas- 
ters themselves teaching each his peculiar subject at a fixed and 
separate hour ; until, in the year 1446, by the authority of the 
Faculty [private tuition was abolished, and] four Houses were 
appropriated to licensed instruction in Philosophy, [some eight 
and twenty other Colleges belonging to it, being left to supply 
board and lodging to the students.] These four Houses are com- 
monly called Pcedagogia, and, from their several insignia, go by 
the names of the Lily, the Falcon, the Castle, the Hog — The 
Languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Latin), thereafter obtained their 
special Professors in the Trilingual or Buslidian College — The 
chair of Mathematics (though its subject had been previously 
taught), was founded in the year 1636."— (Pp. 9, 243, 249.) 

Vernuljeus, L. ii. c. 6. " On Study and Degrees in the 
[Louvain] Faculty op Arts. 

- - - " Let us now speak concerning Study, which in this Fac- 
ulty is two-fold. 

" The study of Philosophy is accomplished in two years. For 
there is given nine months to Logic, eight to Physics, four to 
'Metaphysics ; while the three last months are devoted to Repe- 
titions of the whole course of Philosophy. — [' Account is also 
taken of Moral Philosophy, taught on Sundays and Holidays, 
by the public Professor, in ' the Street' or School of Arts, and in 
the Psedagogia by domestic Professors.' — (V. Andreas, p. 242.)] 

" The exercises of this philosophical study take place in four 
G-ymnasia, called Pcedagogia. In each of these there are four 
daily prelections, two before, two after, noon ; - - - - and each 
House has four Professors of Philosophy, two of whom are called 
Primaries, two Secondaries. These Professors divide among 
them the whole course of Philosophy. And first, in Logic : The 
Primaries expound the Introduction of Porphyry, Aristotle's Cate- 
gories, and his books of Prior and Posterior Analytics ; while the 
Secondaries, after an explanation of the Elements of Logic, lec- 
ture upon Aristotle's books of Enouncement, Topics, and Soph- 
isms. In Physics and Metaphysics 1 [I omit the enumeration of 

1 Compare Valerius Andreas, pp. 242, 243. 



EXAMINATIONS IN LOUVAIN. 665 

books,] the Primaries teach at the hours of six and ten of the 
morning ; the Secondaries at two and four of the afternoon ; and 
the hearers for one hour take down the dictates 1 of their instructor, 
while for another they are examined and required to give an ac- 
count of the prelection which they have again, in the interval, 
considered. 

" The exercises of Disputation are either private or public. 

'.' The private are conducted in the several Psedagogia, and in 
kind are two-fold. — In the first place, the students, at certain fixed 
hours, contend with each other, on proposed questions, note each 
other's errors, and submit them to the judgment of the Professor ; 
and he, thereafter, assigns place and rank to the more learned. — 
Besides these, on each Monday and Friday, there are Disputations 
held on points of Logic and Physics, over which one of the Pro- 
fessors in rotation presides. These commence in January, and 
end in June. 

" The public Disputations take place in the common School 
of Arts, which is called ' The Street ;' and these also are of two 
kinds. — In the first place, on Mondays and Fridays, during Lent, 
the Physical auditors of all the Grymnasia, divided into certain 
classes, compete among themselves for glory ; one prescribing to 
another the matter of disputation. — Besides these, there are eight 
other Disputations, carried through on Sundays, and which com- 
mence in January. There are present all the Physical hearers 
with their Professors, and in these they severally make answer 
during an hour on certain predetermined theses ; and are oppugned 
by the Prior Bachelor (that is, by him who has been chosen from 
the more learned), and thereafter by others. 

" The Honors or Degrees which are obtained in this Faculty 
are those of Bachelor, Licentiate, Master. Previous to these 
there is one public act, that of Determination, as it is called. 
Therein the students of Logic, in a public meeting of the whole 
University, severally state their opinion on some Ethical question 
proposed by the Preses, who is one of the Professors. In this 
manner they profess themselves Students of Philosophy, but ob- 
tain no degree. 



1 The Faculty had not a printed cursus on these departments, as on Logic. The 
Commentaries by the Masters of Louvain on the books of the Organon, are among 
the best extant. But the objects of study in all the Psedagogia were uniform ; and 
all the pupils could be equally examined, &c, against each other in the general con- 
course of the University. 



666 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (B.) 

" The Baccalaureate is here two-fold. The one is obtained on 
examination after a three months' study of Physios ; the other, 
after the completion of the course of Metaphysics, and a public 
responsion touching Philosophy in general. 

" For the License, the candidates of all the G-ymnasia are pre- 
sented in a body to the Venerable Faculty of Arts ; and on that 
occasion, and in their presence, their future Examiners (that is 
the [eight] Primary Professors of all the Gymnasia, nominated 
by the G-ymnasiarchs), make solemn oath, that they will be in- 
fluenced by no private favor, but rank each candidate in the 
strict order of merit. — The examination then begins. This is 
two-fold ; the one is called the Trial, the other the Examination 
[proper.] For each, the whole body of candidates is divided into 
three Classes. The First Class consists of twelve, to wit, three 
from each of the Gymnasia, students namely, who by the judg- 
ment of the Professors stand highest in learning. The Second 
Class, in like manner, comprehends twelve, the three, to wit, 
who from the four Gymnasia are named as nearest in proficiency 
to the first. To them [of the second class,] are added twelve 
others, called Aspirants. The Third Class is composed of all 
the rest. Those who are of the First Class are [each] examined 
for about three hours on all the branches of Philosophy ; those 
who are of the Second, for two hours ; those who are of the Third, 
for half an hour ; and this, both in what is called the Trial, and 
in the Examination proper. The several examiners write down 
the answers of all the candidates, read them over again at home, 
and determine [what in their several opinions should be] the order 
of all and each, and write out the list. The Examination fin- 
ished, the examiners, on a day appointed, consign their lists of 
arrangement to the Dean, who delivers them to the Gymnasiarchs. 
They consult among themselves, and, by an ingenious device, 
calculate the suffrages of arrangement, and appoint to each can- 
didate his true and unquestionable rank. 

" "When, however, the First or highest [Primus) is proclaimed, 
the bell is tolled in his Gymnasium, for three days and nights, 
and holiday celebrated. I pass over the other signs of public 
rejoicing. This honor is valued at the highest, and he who ob- 
tains it is an object of universal observation. On the third day 
thereafter, in the public School of Arts, the candidates are, in 
this fashion, proclaimed Licentiates : — In the first place, the Dean 
of the Venerable Faculty, after a public oration, presents the can- 



EXAMINATIONS IN LOUVAIN. 667 

didates to the Chancellor [who on this occasion ranks superior to 
the Rector.] He (the Chancellor) then, having propounded a 
question, orders the Primus to afford, in the answer, a specimen 
of his erudition, he himself acting as opponent. The names of 
all the others are then proclaimed by the Beadle, in the order 
established by the Grymnasiarchs, on the votes of the examining 
Professors." 

L. ii. c. 8. On the celebrity of the [Louvain] Faculty of 
Arts. k4 -- -' - '- Nearly two hundred candidates annually merit 
the Laurel of Arts ; what other University confers so many? The 
emulation prevalent between all the [Houses,] Masters, and Stu- 
dents of this Faculty, and which though intense is void of envy, 
for in study discord is concordant ; — this emulation braces both 
the diligence of the teachers, and the application of the taught. 
And while they who stand first in the classification, merit and 
receive especial honor, while they who stand last, are almost 
equally disgraced; 1 the issue is, that no labor is spared either by 
the Professors in teaching, or by the Pupils in learning. The 
ambition of all is here honorable and hard-working." 

The result of this excellent scheme of examination is — that a 
degree, taken in the University of Louvain, was always accounted 
respectable, and, if connected with a high place upon the list, 
superior to any other throughout Christendom. And this too 
when the relative eminence of its Professors had, from a vicious 
patronage (partly in the hands of the Academical, partly in the 
hands of the Municipal, body), declined beneath the level, more 
especially, of the Dutch and Italian Universities. For these 

1 It does not appear that there were in Louvain any, at least any adequate, rejec- 
tions. — Universities, which have not lavished their degrees on mere standing, or mere 
professorial attendance (to say nothing of inferior considerations), have endeavored to 
make their examinations respectable, in three ways : which ways also admit of junc- 
tion ; for any two of them may be combined, while the whole three may also be 
united. These are, 1°. Rejection of incompetent candidates, by relation to some 
minimum of knowledge ; 2°. Classification of candidates, by their proficiency in rela- 
tion to certain amounts of knowledge ; 3°. Subordination of candidates determined 
merely by their inferiority in knowledge, relatively to each other. The Edinburgh 
medical degrees, as they formerly were given, may stand as an example of the first ; 
the Louvain and quondam (?) Cambridge degrees in Arts (had Cambridge published 
and arranged its Polloi), may afford instances of the second added to the third ; while 
those of Oxford, for nearly half a century, may supply the specimen of a combination 
of the first and second. — A union of the whole three is the condition of a perfect 
examination. The condition I say ; for, besides that condition, there are further 
requisites of such perfection ; as the competence of examiners, their obligation to 
impartiality established upon oath, the publicity of the examination, and the adequate 
appointment of its subjects. 



668 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (B.) 

Universities, while sedulous and successful in filling their Chairs 
with the most illustrious teachers, were always unfortunately 
remiss in the bestowal of their academical honors. 1 

1 In the scattered biographies of the distinguished alumni of Louvain, I find it 
almost uniformly recorded, what was their rank in the graduation list of Arts. Of 
these I chance to have noted a few, which I may give in chronological order. — In 
1748, Pope Hadrian VI. is Primus; in 1504, M. Dorpius is 5th; in 1507, R. Tap- 
perus is 2d ; in 1522, H. Triverius is Primus ; in 1527, F. Sonnius is Primus ; in 
1529, C. Jansenius is Primus; in 1542, H. Elenus is Primus ; in 1556, H. Cuyckius 
is Primus, and H. Gravius is 5th; in 1558, J. Molanus is 6th; in 1561, M. Hovius 
the canonist is only 46th, and G. Estius, the great theologian, 7th ; in 1572, however, 
the greater L. Lessius is Primus ; in 1575, P. Lombardus, Archbishop of Armagh, 
is Primus; in 1599, Du Trieu, the logician, is Primus; in 1604, C. Jansenius 
(from whom the Jansenists) is Primus; in 1606, the philosopher Fromondus is 
3d, &c. &c. &c. 



APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. 

(C.) ON A REFORM OF THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES, "WITH 
ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO OXFORD; AND LIMITED TO 
THE FACULTY OF ARTS. 

Any project for the reform of old and wealthy schools, like the 
great English Universities, is beset with difficulties, if practical 
possibility is to be combined with theoretical (not to say perfec- 
tion, but) improvement. It is comparatively easy to devise the 
scheme of a faultless University, if we are allowed to abstract 
from circumstances. It is easy, even, to discover and to expose 
defects. Nor is it difficult to trace — how an ancient institution 
may gradually degenerate — how certain private interests may 
succeed in gaining a preponderance over the common good — 
how these interests, if left unchecked, may introduce, foster, and 
defend the most calamitous abuses — until, at length, the semi- 
nary may be, de facto, the punctual converse of itself, de jure. 
And such, in truth, is the condition of the Universities of Oxford 
and Cambridge ; for no greater contrast can, even be conceived, 
than are exhibited by these venerable schools, in what they actu- 
ally are, and in what they profess, and, as controlled by statute, 
must profess themselves to be. In two of the preceding articles, 
(pp. 383-457), I have endeavored to signalize and to explain, 
how these Universities, as seminaries of education, present an 
almost diametrical opposition between their actual and their legal 
existence. By statute, they are organized as schools of Theology, 
Law, Medicine, and (as a preliminary of all liberal professions) 
of the liberal Arts ; but, in fact, the only instruction which they 
now afford, is in the lowest department of this last faculty alone. 
Intra-academical study is now illegally commuted with extra- 
academical standing. Degrees — privileged certificates of com- 
petency — evacuated of all truth, are now lavished without the 
legal conditions of university instruction and university examina- 
tion. In short, the public incorporation and its public instruction 
are now illegally extinguished ; illegally superseded, but not rea- 



670 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

sonably supplied by the private Houses and their private tuition. 
In fine, the statutes of the institution are now only performed 
through a system of perjury, disgraceful to the school, disgrace- 
ful to the country, and as pervasive in these Universities, as it is 
fortunately, elsewhere unexampled. 

So much I have alleged, because so much, I am convinced, is 
true. But I would not assert, that what has been irregularly 
abolished, is all deserving of restoration, nor, that what has irre- 
gularly sprung up, is all deserving of abolition. On the contrary, 
the very fact, that a state of right could have been so totally, and 
yet so quietly, reversed, affords a presumption that what was 
passively abrogated, was itself but feeble ; and though, with 
proper fostering, the feeble might have ultimately waxed strong, 
still it would be a rash conclusion, that in the old and legal there 
was nothing but good, in the new and intrusive nothing but evil. 
At present, waiving all discussion in regard to the professional 
Faculties, and limiting our consideration to the school of liberal, 
or general education — to the fundamental Faculty of Arts alone ; 
it will more than suffice for what we can at present even perfunc- 
torily accomplish, to inquire : — How do the English Universities, 
how, in particular, does Oxford, the principal of these, execute 
its one greatest, nay, now, its one only educational function — 
cultivate, in general, the mental faculties, prepare its alumni for 
any liberal pursuit in life, by concentrating their awakened 
efforts, in studies (objectively) the most important, and [subjec- 
tively) the most improving ? 

In attempting an answer to this question, it is requisite to fol- 
low out a certain order. For, it is evident, that before proceeding 
to consider what ought to be, we should have previously ascer- 
tained what is, accomplished. I shall, accordingly, inquire and 
endeavor to determine — first of all, what Oxford, as an instru- 
ment of education, does actually perform — Oxford as it is ; and 
thereafter, how, in consistency with its institutions, it may, in 
this respect, be improved — Oxford as it might be. 

I. Oxford as it is. — It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, 
to determine, with sufficient accuracy, the general efficiency of 
Oxford, as compared with any other University. But Oxford, as 
it now exists, is not a single educational organ. It is a congeries 
of such organs : each of its twenty-four private Houses consti- 
tuting one ; and, at the same time, the public University, in its 
FiXiimination for the primary degree, affords an irrecusable 



OXFORD AS IT IS. 67 1 

standard by which we may very accurately measure the relative 
efficiency of these several organs. If, therefore, we find, that 
these, compared among themselves, afford, in the Examination, 
for a series of years, very different and still very uniform results ; 
we shall be entitled to infer, that one House is comparatively a 
good, another comparatively a bad, instrument of education ; — be 
warranted to determine, even on an Oxford standard, what every 
Oxford House does, may, and should accomplish ; — be enabled, in 
fine, to generalize the circumstances, by which such accomplish- 
ment is there furthered or impeded ; — -and, consequently, to judge 
what are the most feasible measures, for the reform and improve- 
ment of this University. The same comparison, with the same 
results, may also, it is evident, be instituted between the effi- 
ciency of the same House at one period, and its efficiency at 
another. 

Taking, therefore, as the standard of academical proficiency 
the public Examination in its two Departments, and its four 
Classes of Honor ; I proceed to apply this to the several Houses. 
And (as shown in the following Table) in two different ways : the 
one giving the comparative eminence of those educated in each 
House (there I.) ; the other, the comparative eminence of those 
who in each House act as educators (there II.) 

In reference to the Instructed : The Table shows of each House 
the number of its undergraduates (a) ; then the absolute number 
of the honors obtained by them in each department and in every 
class (b, c) ; then the absolute number of Double Firsts (d) ; 
lastly, the number of First Class Honors in either department in 
proportion to the number of competitors (g, h) ; but previously, 
by the same relation, the classes of each department valued from 
lowest to highest, as 1, 2, 3, 4 (e, f). On this proportion in 
L. H., proceeding only to the first decimal, I have arranged the 
Houses ; when equal in L. H., their difference in D. M. has then 
determined the order. I have taken, as a sufficient period, the 
ten years ending with 1847 ; (the Calendar of 1848 being the 
only one within my reach when the Table was abstracted ;) and 
I was compelled (for the same reason) to make the number of 
undergraduates of the last year stand for an average of the 
whole ten. 

In reference to the Instructors : The Table shows, in each 
House : first, absolutely, the amount and quality of the Academi- 
cal Honors belonging to its several educators, whether Tutors or 



TABLE ; 

Phowhig the comparative efficiency of the Oxford Houses, as 
Seminaries of Education. 



Houses 
arranged 
according to 
their propor- 
tion of valued 
graduation 
Honors, pri- 
marily in 
Literae Hu- 
maniores ; 
by (e.) 
From 1838 to 
1847. 



Balliol 

Merton 

Corpus 

Lincoln 

University . . . 

Wadham 

Magdalen .... 
St. John's .... 
Christ Church 

Exeter 

New Col- 
lege 

Brazenose 

! Queen's .... 
Oriel 

| Trinity 

\ Worcester . . . 

St. Mary's 

jj Hall 

; Jesus 

j Magdalen 
\ Hall 

Pembroke .... 
. New Inn 

I Hall 

! St. Alban's 

\ Hall 

' St. Edmund's 



Hall. 



All Souls . . 



I. The Instructed. — Undergraduates (from 1838 to 1847), their 



(a) 

Num- 
ber in 
1847. 



84 
38 
24 
56 
63 
87 
27 
66 
186 
134 

20 
95 
74 
82 
83 
94 

33 

57 

85 
72 

28 



J 532 



Honors absolutely. 



(b) 
Literse Hum. 



i. ii. iii. iv 



104 



22 

12 

2 

15 

16 
29 
9 
11 
35 
10; 32 

3 1 3 

10 j 27 

8! 14 

10; 11 

6 1 9 



220 285 



311 



(c) 
Disc. Math. 



-15 



n. .n. iv. 



1 



:;! 1 
1 | 2 
■ -I 1 



1 1 



63 | 41 i 106 



(d) 



Double 
Firsts. 



10 



Honors in proportion to their numbers. 



Classes valued* 
and added. 



(e) (f) 

Hum. Math. 



1:1 

1 : ) 
I : 1 

1:2: 

1 : 2- 

I :3- 

1 : 4- 



.4 


1 


1- 


•4 


1 


1- 


•4 


1 


1- 


• 


1 


3- 


■6 


1 


1- 


■6 


1 


2- 


G 


1 


5 • 


•7 


1 


1- 


■8 


1 


2- 


■8 


1 


2- 


•8 


1 


2' 


•9 


1 
1 


2 ' 
3- 


■9 


1 


4- 





l 


2" 


■o 


i 


7 ' 


• o 


I 


4- 


' 5 


i 


9- 


•6 


i 


?- 


•8 


1: 


14- 


•0 


1 


4- 


■7 





8- 


■6 


1: 


11- 


•o 








First Classes. 



Cg) 

Hum. 



1 : 2E 

1 : 72 



1 : 28 
: 8 



: 32 
: 4 



* Mathematical Reader, 
and Philosophy R. 
Fourth = 1. 



t Latin R; 
f Divinity R. 



(h) 
Math. 



1 : 16 
1 : 87 

: 27 

1 : 22 
1 : 62 
1 : 27 

: 20 

1 : 19 
1 : 37 
1 : 41 
1 : 28 
1 : 94 

: 33 

1 : 57 

: 85 

1 : 72 

\ : 28 

: 8 

: 32 
: 4 



$ Greek R. || Rhetoric R. § Logic 

** Class— First = 4, Second = 3, Third =2, 



T A B L E — Continued; 

Showing the comparative efficiency of the Oxford Houses, a^ 
Seminaries of Education. 



1 

II. The Instructors ; (as in 1847), their 


Numbers, Kinds, and Honors. 


Numbers in proportion to their First Class Honors. 




(i) 


(k) 


0) 




(m) 




Tutors (also Readers.) 


Readers (only.) 


Literae Humaniores. 


Discipl 


inae Mathematical. 


1 

H. M. 


2 

H. M. 


3 

H. M. 


4 

H. M. 


1 | . 

H. M. 1 H. M. 


3 

H. M, 


Teachers 
in gen. 


Tutors. 


Readers. 


Teachers 
in gen. 


Tutors. 


Readers. 


1—0 


1—0 


1—0 




1— 21 1—1*4 




5 : 5 


3 : 3 


2 : 2 


5 : 1 


3 : 


2 : 1 


[l-3tf 


1—0 








2-1* ... 




3 : 2 


2 : 2 


1 • 


3 : 1 


2 : 


1 :1] 


2-Of 

1—0 

1—0 


i-ot 


1—0 






1 . . . 




3 : 2 


3 : 2 




3 : 


3 : 




2— Ot 


1—2 










3 : 2 


3 :2 




3 : 


3 : 




2—0 


1—1 






1—1* ... 




4 : 3 


3 : 2 


1 : 1 


4 :2 


3 : 1 


1 : 1 


2—2 


2—3 








2— 2f ! 2— ltt 




4 : 


2 : 


2 :0 


4 : 1 


2 : 


2 : 1 


3—0 


2—1* 








?-?1 i ... 




2 : 


2 : 




2 : 1 


2 : 1 




2—2 


2—0 








... 




2 : 


2 : 




2 : 


2 : 




. 0—0 


1—0 








6—1* 2 — OJ 


4-0|| 


5 : 1 


2 : 1 


3 : 


5 : 1 


2 : 


3 : 1 


1—0 


1—0 


1—3 


1—0 


o— 01 lo— o* 




5 : 3 


3 : 3 


2 : 


5 :0 


3 .0 


2 : 


?-m 


? ? 


1—2 








?)3 ; 1 


?)3 : 1 




2)3 : 


?)3 : 




I i-ot 


2— OJ 


1—0 




4-1*1 i ... 




4 : 2 


3 : 2 


1 : 


4 : 1 


3 : 


1 : 1 


I 1—1 


3—0 


2—0 




2—1* j . . . 




4 : 1 


3 : 1 


1 : 


4 : 2 


3 : 1 


1 : 1 


|2— 


1—0 


2—1 








3 : 1 


3 : 1 




3 : 1 


3 : 1 




13—0 


1—2 


1-1^ 




2-OH j ... 




4 : 2 


3 :2 


1 : 


4 : 1 


3 : 1 


1 :0 


1 1_ ° 


2—1 






0-31 j ... 

I 




3 : 1 


2: 1 


1 : 


3 :,1 


2 : 1 


1 :0 


2-1 


i-ot 


3—0 




3—41 ,3— Of 




5:1 


3:1 


2 : 


5:1 


3 : 1 


2:0 


1 1—2 


2—0 


3—1* 




... 


;..;; 




3 Vl 


3 I 1 




3 : 1 


3:1 


::: 


1—0 














1 : 1 


1 : 1 




1 :0 


1 : 


::: 
















66 :29 


49 :26 


17 : 3 


66 : 15 


49 : 8 


17:7 



tt From the Calendar of 1851, the Instructors being accidentally not marked in that of 1848. 
tt Until lately New College exercised its unhappy privilege of examining and passing its own members, 
as candidates for a degree. 



Uu 



67'4 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

Readers (i, k) ; and secondly, the Highest Honors, in either de- 
partment, in proportion to the number of these educators (1, m). — 
This latter part of the Table is (for the reason assigned) wholly 
calculated on the year 1847. 1 

Looking, then, to the Table, and to its first part ; — we here 
see, that one House differs marvelously from another in what it 
performs. The esprit de corps is fully as remarkable in Colleges 
as in Regiments ; although individual competency and courage 
must, on the average, be pretty much the same in all. Thus, 
while one Regiment is for generations known as the "fighting," 

another as "the flying, ;" so (what is more intelligible), in 

one College a first class is merely of commonplace respectability, 
while in another it is a kind of secular dignity, and not to be 
plucked, there even confers an enviable distinction. 

Comparing, therefore, the Houses in Literce Humaniores : — In 
this department, we find that four Houses (two Colleges and two 
Halls), containing above a hundred undergraduates, have -during 
the decade no First Class Honors at all. — Again, discounting 
these, and comparing only the Houses which have compassed this 



1 This Table thus affords (apart from inaccuracies), not the very truth, but only a 
sufficiently close approximation to it. 

The number of Undergraduates, in the several Houses, ought to have been calcu- 
lated, not on one, but on an average of all the ten years. — The same applies to the 
Instructors. Their average academical eminence, for the several Colleges, ought to 
have been estimated by a comparison of every year, and not assumed on the last 
alone. But as I was unable, as stated, when the abstract was made, to accomplish 
this, the Table raus* stand as it is ; for I have neither time nor patience to reconstruct 
it. Nor do I think, that the result would vary in any point of importance ; for col- 
legial accommodation has been long inadequate ; and, at the same time, lodging out 
during the first four years is not allowed ; while the standard of instruction in a House 
does not frequently nor rapidly change. It might, however, be interesting, had we 
Tables of the kind, adequately executed — say for every five years. 

In regard to the valuation of the Classes, on which I have arranged the Houses, in 
their educational eminence, I have a remark to make. — This valuation is unfavorable 
to First Classes ; therefore, to the higher Colleges, which preponderate in Highest 
Honors. For, while the three inferior classes testify, that a candidate is above one 
minimum, they testify that he is below another ; whereas, the First Class, while it 
testifies that a Candidate is above a certain minimum, takes no account of how much 
or how little he exceeds it. It thus contains and equalizes the most unequal profi- 
ciencies ; that which is just competent, and that which is far more than competent. 
I was, however, unwilling that any possible objection should be taken on the ground 
that the valuation was, in an}' respect, arbitrary. Accordingly, I allow every advant- 
age to those Houses which rejoice in their amount of respectable, though humbler 
honors. 

A Double First evidences both talent and a power of application. But it only 
proves that a candidate (with competent ability) has prepared himself in two comple- 
ments, each equal to the amount required for a First Class. Of more it testifies no- 
thing. 



OXFORD AS IT IS. 675 

Jistinction, we find that one College is, on this standard, eighteen 
times more efficient than another. — Finally, the same discount 
being made, the valued classes afford a similar result ; some 
Colleges, by a full average, in this the principal department, ap- 
proving themselves four and a half, and, the discount not made, 
ten times better instruments of education than others. 

In Disciplined Mathematicce, the difference, if less important, 
is hardly less signal. During the decade, seven Houses, (three 
Colleges and four Halls), and with an average of undergraduates 
considerably above two hundred, show no Fust Class Honors ; — 
and of these, tivo (a College and a Hall) have no Honor, even of 
the lowest. — Again, discounting these, and taking only the Houses 
which have attained to a first class, still we find in this respect, 
one College more than ten times superior to another. — Finally, 
making the same discount ; on the criterion of the whole Honors 
valued, College excels College, as an educational organ by nearly 
a twelve-fold difference. 

But in the last place {discounting All Souls and the Halls), and 
taking the // alf proportion of the highest College as a mean, we 
have the following results : 

L. H. — In Valued Classes : three Colleges are of the very mean 
(1 : • 8) ; eight above ; and eight below it. — In First Classes : 
of the mean (1:8), we have one college; above it three; and 
below it fifteen. 

D. M. — In Valued Classes : we have of the mean (1:2*4) one 
college ; above it seven ; and below it eleven. — In First Classes : 
there are above the mean (1 : 18) four colleges ; and below it 
fifteen. 1 

1 I may append the following proportions, though I see there are probably several 
minor inaccuracies. But I can not go through the labor of correction ; more especial- 
ly as they are irrelevant to my argument, and do not affect the general residt. 

A) Literm Humaniores. Proportion of — 

All classified (923), to all (here) unhonored graduates (1932 ?), as 1 : 21 

The three higher classes (609), to all graduates below them (2110), as 1 : 3' 5 

The two higher classes (324), to all graduates below them (2395), as 1 : 7"0 

The highest class (104), to all graduates below it (2615), as 1 : 25 '3 

The highest (104), to all other classes (819), as 1 : 8 

B) Disciplines Mathematics. Proportion of — 

All classified (255), to all (here) unhonored graduates (26181), as 1 : 10 3 

The three higher classes (149), to all graduates below them (1902), as 1 : 13 

The two higher classes (108), to all graduates below them (1943), as 1 : 18 

The highest class (45), to all graduates below it (2006), as 1 : 40" 1 

The highest (45), to all the other classes (210), as l 1 : 5 • 



676 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

Now, it may well be, that the very best of these Houses ac- 
complishes far less, than in other circumstances, it might. But 
this is not proved — at least not obtrusively. It is, however, 
proved, that some of the Oxford Houses, throwing out the worst, 
and judging only by the most favorable criterion — that some of 
the Oxford Houses now perform, as academical instruments, jive 
—ten — -fifteen — ay twenty times more than others. But it is 
clear, that, unless from ignorance or compulsion, no one in his 
senses would employ a workman, pay him too the wages of a 
first rate artificer, who is worse — not to say, five, ten, twenty 
times worse, than a brother operative. Yet the father, who would 
deem it unimaginable to send his son to a second-rate dancing- 
school, complacently enters him of a tenth-rate College ; where 
the youth is soon, by precept and example, accomplished foi\ life 
— as a conceited ignoramus, a hopeless idler ; while the State 
standing by, tolerates, nay protects the illegal monopoly, which a 
body of men, wholly unqualified, as a body, for instructors, have 
long usurped, in the privileged seminaries of the English Church 
and of the English nation. 

Looking again to the Table in its second part, we see, in some 
degree, how these startling differences arise. We see, that the 
relative eminence of the Houses, estimated by the academical 
honors of the taught, is not at variance with the academical dis- 
tinction of the teachers. We see further, how the general aca- 
demical eminence of the instructors, is not such as to qualify 
them to assume, far less exclusively to engross, the function of 
academical education. A competent education supposes, that the 
educator possesses two, and two conjunct, qualities : 1°, that he 
should be able to aid, to aid but not to relieve, his pupil in the 
effort of attaining knowledge : 2°, that he should, in his own per- 
son, exhibit a pattern of learning, capable of inspiring his pupil 
with discontent at any present advancement, and a resolution to 
be satisfied with no humble acquisition. These conjunct condi- 



C) Both Departments. Proportion of — 

All the Mathematical (255), to all the Literary Honors (923), as .... 
Exclusive honors in D. M. (136 1) to exc. honors in L. H. (822 1), as . . 

Men honored (958 1), to men unhonored (1796), as 

First class in D. M. (45), to First class in L. H. (104), as 

Men of First class in L. H. not in D. M. (79 1) to whole class (104), as 
Men of First clasn in D. M. not in L. H. (101) to whole class (45), as 

Double Firsts (10], to all other graduates (2855 1), as 

Double Firsts (10) to all other honored graduates (958 1), as 



36 
6-0 
19 
23 
13 
45 
2855 
95-8 



OXFORD AS IT IS. 677 

tions, the collegial instructors of Oxford are seen, by the Oxford 
standard itself, not only not to fulfill, but actually to reverse. 
" Ignorance on stilts." For they are, in general, unable either to 
assist their pupils in, or to animate them to, an ever higher pro- 
gress ; whereas they are peculiarly adapted to infect them with 
discouragement, to affect them with disgust, or to lull them into 
a self-satisfied conceit. — {To say nothing of the Halls :) 

As to Liter a Humaniores, the Highest Honors are not, even 
in this primary department, attained by the great body of those 
who assume the collegial office of education. — Of Instructors, 
sixty-six in number, above a half (37) are not of the First Class ; 
of the Tutors, in number forty-nine, nearly a half (23) are simi- 
larly deficient ; and the same is true of about five sixths (14) of 
the seventeen simple Readers. Only a single College (Balliol 1 ) 

1 It afforded me great satisfaction to find, that Balliol, the oldest College in the 
University, stands so decidedly pre-eminent in this comparative estimate of the present 
efficiency of its Houses ; a College, in which I spent the happiest of the happy years 
of youth, which is never recollected but with affection, and from which, as I gratefully 
acknowledge, I carried into life a taste for those studies which have constituted the 
most interesting of my subsequent pursuits. 

I. Looking to the Instructed. 

In the first place, the Honors being absolutely considered. — Here, not distinguishing 
the two departments : — Balliol surpasses every other House in the number of these, 
high and low, indifferently added (117) — except Christ Church : but Christ Church, by 
far the largest House in the University, while it exceeds Balliol in the number of 
Honors, of all kinds and degrees, by one-fourth (29), exceeds it also in the number of 
competitors for these by five-fourths (102). — Again, distinguishing the departments : — 
Balliol, maintains the same superiority in either, as in both. — Of Highest (or First 
Class) Honors ; Balliol, of all the Houses, exhibits — most in the combined departments 
(23) — -most in the Liter <z Humaniores (17) — most in the Discipline Mathematicce (6). 
In the first and second respect, its Honors are, in fact, nearly double those of any other 
House ; while Christ Church, a College so much more numerous, shows only of these, 
in the L. H., seven, in the D. M., three. 

In the second place, considering the number of Honors in proportion to the number 
of undergraduates : — Balliol stands first, whether we confound the two departments oi 
distinguish them. — And taking the Highest Honors : Balliol, in like manner, propor- 
tionally surpasses every other House, whether the First Classes be drawn indifferently 
from both departments or specially from each : — with exceptions of two lesser Colleges ; 
it being very slightly surpassed by Corpus in L. H., by Merton and Corpus in D. M. — 
Balliol, likewise stands highest in the amount, absolute and proportional, of its "Double 
Firsts'" — three : this number being only not a third of the complement obtained in all 
the Colleges during the decade ; St. John's alone exhibiting more than one. — Finally, 
valuing the classes, by making the fourth a fourth part of the first, Balliol (though this 
valuation be hardly fair, and hardly fair to it), still predominates, both in the conjoined 
departments ; and, 'with two exceptions of close equality, in these as severally distin- 
guished. — Of the relative superiority of Balliol in the inferior classes of Honor in 
either department, I must refer to the Table. 

(In referring to the Calendar of 1851, which I have recently obtained, I find that the 
relative superiority of Balliol, is still more decisively marked during the three following 
years. With far less than half the number of competitors, Balliol carries off three 
times (9) the number of the highi st literary honors obtained by the largest College, 



678 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

has all its instructors, and these here amount, to five, of the High- 
est Class ; whereas, in three, no instructor whatever exhibits a 

Christ Church (3); while Mcrton and Corpus, the Colleges which, in this respect, are 
nearest to Balliol, show during these years no literary First Classes at all. — In the 
valued classes, Balliol is also superior (to say nothing of Christ Church) to both Merton 
and Corpus, in L. H. ; but is rather inferior to these in D. M. — Balliol, University, and 
Christ Church have also each a Double First.) 
II. Looking to the Instructors. 

Balliol is the only House (as stated in the text), in which all the Teachers (Tutors 
and Readers) are First-Class-mcn ; and the only College in which these are all First 
Class men in L. H. Balliol likewise surpasses every other House, both in the absolute, 
and in the proportional number of Highest Honors shown by its Instructors in the two 
departments, taken together ; as also in the department of L. H. alone. — Indeed, only 
two Colleges besides Balliol (Merton and Exeter), have even all their Tutors of the 
First Class in L. H., and in the former of these the Tutors are only two. In Christ 
Church and Jesus the five Instructors have, in either department, among them, only a 
single Highest Honor. — Balliol, in fine is the only College in which the Readers are 
all distinguished by the same Highest Honor ; with the single exception of University, 
and in that College there is only a single Reader. These are three out of sixteen. 
(Of the Mathematical department, as of minor importance, I say nothing.) 

This relative superiority, both in teacher and taught, shows how greatly collegial 
and academical efficiency is, in the present state of the English Universities, dependent 
on the character of the Tutors, and consequently, on the personal — on the accidental 
qualities of a Head ; for the Head possesses in practice the nomination of Tutors, and, 
in general, the value of the instruction is determined by him. And Dr. Jenkyns, as 
Master of Balliol, may fairly claim, for his own, the comparative excellence of his 
House ; as mainly is it to his zeal, intelligence, and liberality (though the merit of his 
predecessor ought not to be forgotten), that this College has now long occupied so 
great, and yet so unobtrusive, a pre-eminence among the educational institutions of 
Oxford. The undergraduates of Balliol are not drawn from the chosen pupils of a 
great classical school ; they are not elected to the College for their previous acquire- 
ments, and after a wide competition ; they are not a few foundation scholars, but, by 
a great preponderance, independent members. A certain minimum, indeed, of scholar- 
ship is, I believe, now wisely made a requisite of admission. But the main reason of 
the average superiority of the Balliol men, in the final examination, must be sought 
for, in a better awakening within the College, of their studious activity, and in their 
superior tuition. The single advantage which Balliol may claim, is — that its Fellow- 
ships are open ; and the instructors, therefore, may be all competent to the work. 
Merton, the second College, both in true historical antiquity, and in educational emi- 
nence, has great advantages, from its Portionists (14), a large proportion of its under- 
graduates, being (to say nothing of its clerks) elected by the College, after a trial of 
comparative merit, and from a large sphere of competition. But nothing could stand 
against Corpus, the third College as an educational institution, if it did not burden it- 
self by an extra weight of Gentlemen Commoners (6). The " Scholars" (20), who 
constitute the far greatest amount of its undergraduates, are all elected by the College 
from a wide enough circle ; they are, therefore, in a great measure, picked men. And 
so in Lincoln, University, and the other higher Colleges. All this only enhances the 
merit of Balliol. But how much of collegial efficiency, with and apart from such 
advantages, is owing to the character of a Collegial Head, is known to those who 
have any practical acquaintance with the English academical system. By him, through 
the spirit which he diffuses, is principally determined the literary level of the Fellows, 
and altogether, I may safely assert, the efficiency of the Tutors. But to raise, of 
necessity, the standard of tutorial competency — to stimulate effectually, certainly, uni- 
versally, the exertion of the student — and to direct it, withal, on the most improving 
applications ; these are the primary conditions of any beneficial change in the present 
routine of the University and Colleges. 



OXFORD AS IT IS. 679 

similar Honor. Seven colleges show their instructors thus classi- 
fied, in only the proportion — of one in five (2) — of one in four (1) 
— of one in three (4). And so forth. 

The Disciplines Mathematics are, in difficulty and importance, 
greatly inferior to the Literee Humaniores ; but, even to this 
inferior department, the collegial teachers are, as a body, obtru- 
sively inadequate. — The Tutors, the principal and only regular 
instructors, while not less than one-half of them have been of the 
First Class in L. H., show less even than a sixth part of the body 
in the First Class of D. M. They are even excelled in this by 
the mere Readers. None of the Colleges shows this Honor in the 
highest proportion ; none, in fact, shows it in a higher proportion 
to the number of instructors, than as one to three, except two 
(Queen's and University) ; while in five the instructors, and in 
ten the Tutors, are destitute of it altogether. — And so forth. 1 

This is just the result we should anticipate from knowing two 
things : — Firstly, that the collegial body (Fellows and Head) was 
not in general constituted by capacity and learning ; — Secondly, 
that this body had been allowed furtively to usurp, from the Uni- 
versity, the whole function of academical instruction. Hence 
may be explained : — 1°, The lamentable inefficiency of the system 
as a whole ; — 2°, The mighty difference between College and Col- 
lege, as academical instruments, either from the chronic accident 
of a better constitution, or from the temporary accident of a bet- 
ter collegial staff, and, consequently, a better collegial spirit ; — 
and 3°, From this last accident, the remarkable contrast of a Col- 
lege with itself, in respect of its comparative efficiency at one 
period, and its comparative inefficiency at another. The Table 
manifests the two former ; and it may be proper here to say some- 
thing in illustration of the third. 

But now, as I can afford only to be brief, I must limit the 
consideration to a single College, and to First Classes. I shall, 
however, take as the example, the most numerous, and in some 

1 I am fully aware that an Examination like that of Oxford, is (to speak only of the 
L. H.) more to be relied on as a test of scholarship than of original talent — in so far 
as these can be divorced ; and that other evidence, say that of an able book, ought to 
be subsequently taken into the estimate. But however limited (and of its impartiality 
I have never heard a doubt), this Examination ought, in the absence of any other 
proof, so far to be relied on ; more especially when a candidate, not of very nervous 
temperament, has aimed at academical distinction. But, in the case of the collegial 
instructors, such supplementary or countervailing evidence can rarely be adduced ; 
for, with two or three honorable exceptions, none of them have enabled the world to 
gage their competency, by publication. 



680 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

respects the most favorably appointed College 1 in the University 
— Christ Church. Of the times to be compared, the one shall be 
the period of thirty years from the first institution of classified 
examinations for the degree, in 1807 ; the other, the period of 
ten years ending in 1847 (the year with which the Calendar 
before me terminates). The one year (1837) intermediate 
between these two periods, is, for uniformity and the convenience 
of numeration, omitted. The former period, be it observed, I 
shall call the three decades, the latter the one decade. 

Double Firsts. — In the three decades Christ Church, com- 
mencing the series, 2 shows of these, twenty-nine ; while all the 
other Houses have, among them, only thirty -two. The former 
and latter have thus, on an average, severally, about one Double 
First a year: but the honor, in proportion to the number of 
undergraduates, is in Christ Church (with its 186), rather more 
than 1:6; in the other Houses (with their 1346), rather more 
than 1 : 42. The College is thus seven times superior to the Uni- 
versity. — In the one decade, things are, however, marvelously 
changed. For while the other Houses maintain the proportion 
of 1 : 45 ; Christ Church, having now no Double First, sinks to 
the negative proportion of : 186 — disappears. 

First Classes in Literce Humaniores. — In the three decades 
Christ Church can boast of these honors — ninety-seven ; that is, 
in their proportion to the number of undergraduates as 1:1*9; 
whereas the other Houses, together, have of these only two hun- 
dred and forty ; that is, in the same proportion, as 1:5*6. 
Christ Church, in this respect, is thus ahead of the University, 
in a three-fold proportion. — The superiority is however reversed 
in the one decade : Christ Church now showing a proportion of 
only 1:9*0; while the rest of the University shows a propor- 
tion of 1 : 4 * 6 — that is, beats the College by two to one. — In the 
three decades, of these honors : Christ Church has an annual 
average of 3*2; the other Houses an annual average of only 
8 * 0. — In the one decade, on the contrary, Christ Church exhibits 
only an annual average of • 7 ; while the other Houses exhibit 
an annual average of 9 * 7. Christ Church has thus fallen to little 



1 I say only " in some respects ;" for the " Students" of Christ Church are of those 
collegial "institutions" which Bishop Coplestone justly calls "the worst'' 1 (above p. 
395) ; and Christ Church admits a more numerous body of Gentlemen Commoners, 
the»academical opprobrium, than any other House w the University. (See below. "> 

2 At the head of the series stands — Robertus Peel. 



OXFORD AS IT IS. 681 

more than a fifth of its former height ; whereas the University at 
large has, by nearly a fifth, arisen. 

First Classes in Disciplines Mathematics. — In the three de- 
cades, Christ Church has of these, seventy -tivo ; that is, in the 
proportion of honors to numbers, as 1 : 2 • 4 ; while the other 
Houses have of these only a hundred and thirty-six ; that is, in 
the same proportion, as 1 : 10 • 0. The College thus beats the 
University by more than four to one. — In the one decade, how- 
ever, this relation of superiority is again reversed ; the University 
now beating the College by more than two to one : for while 
Christ Church has sunk to a proportion of 1 : 21 • ; the other 
Houses continue to show that of 1 : 10 ■ 2. — In the three decades, 
the annual average of Christ Church is, 2*4; of the University 
at large, 4 ■ 5. — But in the one decade, while Christ Church has 
only • 3 ; the general average, per annum, is 4*2. Thus the 
efficiency of the other Houses remains nearly stationary ; whereas 
that of Christ Church has dwindled even to an eighth. 

Such is the remarkable contrast of a College, in the spirit of 
study, to itself : Christ Church, in the former period, rising as 
proudly, far above the level of the University, as, in the latter, 
it has subsided humbly, far beneath it. A display of the causes 
of this declension I leave for those competent to the task ; but it 
will be found, I am assured, in the higher instruction and the 
higher example, consequently, in the higher standard and higher 
determination to attain it, once so honorably prevalent in the 
society, and now so unhappily suspended. But such fluctuations 
— such lamentable falls are only possible in an ill-regulated Uni- 
versity ; and it should be the aim of any academical improvement 
of Oxford, no longer to abandon the welfare of its students to the 
accidents — of private effort, the exception, of private remission, 
the rule, but securely to preserve, by public measures, in equable 
and proper tension, the exertion of all its alumni. 

Such (apart from all consideration of the objects taught) is the 
present state of educational efficiency in the Oxford Houses, as 
exhibited by the standard of the Oxford Examination. The in- 
stitution of this standard was, indeed, decisive ; it constitutes 
even, as will hereafter be apparent, an epoch in the fortunes of 
the school. It is destined, in the long run, to raise the Univer- 
sity to its ancient supremacy above the Colleges — or rather the 
Colleges to their proper level ; nor needs it any wizard to foresee, 
that the public Examination must issue in the overthrow of the 



682 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

present private and depressing usurpation. For meting, to a 
certain extent, the proportion of ability and acquirement found 
in its several graduates, this their relative proficiency it signalizes 
and publishes to the world. The world is thus now enabled, as 
it was always entitled, to ask : — Why should the public, and ex- 
clusively privileged, education of -Oxford be abandoned to those 
— whether College Heads or College Tutors — whom Oxford her- 
self reports, as comparatively incompetent; and this, moreover, to 
the banishment, from academical usefulness of those whom Ox- 
ford also reports, to be of the worthiest among her sons ? The 
answer is precise. This is done : 1°, because the Heads of the 
collegial interest, were for a certain personal advantage in the 
state and church, unconstitutionally raised by a detestable prime 
minister (by Archbishop Laud), to government and supremacy 
in the University, though, as a body, wholly unable, from their 
lights, and still less inclined from their interests, to administer 
the University, in furtherance of its essential ends. 2°, Because 
the collegial bodies have, through their Heads, for their private 
behoof, and, in violation of oath and statute, superseded the Uni- 
versity in the office of instruction. 3°, Because these bodies not 
being, in general, constituted by merit, their members, though 
latterly monopolizing all privileged education, have been, in gen- 
eral, unable to reach even the higher ranks of academical suffi- 
ciency, far less the eminence which ought to be required of 
academical instructors. And this last fact — that the collegial 
monopolists of university education are not in general the persons 
to be constituted into the guides, patterns, preceptors of studious 
youth : — this is proved, in the first place, by the standard of aca- 
demical sufficiency, the examination for degrees ; and in the 
second, by a comparison, through an adequate period, of one 
House with another, and even of one House with itself, in regard 
of its efficiency as an instrument of education. For though the 
standard of the Examination be far too limited, and even within 
its limits far from perfect ; still, on the average, and in the ab- 
sence of other evidence, it must be relied on ; and this we may 
more securely do, when we find that the public eminence of its 
instructors, and the public eminence of its graduates, are, in a 
College, not only not discordant, but far more in unison than 
might, perhaps, have been anticipated. Now judging by this 
combined standard, unless the collegial interests, as a whole, had 
been altogether incompetent to the work of academical instruc- 



OXFORD AS IT IS. 683 

tion, and left, in fact, without interference to do as little as it 
chose, the following results could not have "been afforded. For, 
as we have seen {abstracting from All Souls and the Halls), 
College varies from College, as an educational instrument : — 1°, 
in the more important department of L. H., on the higher stan- 
dard of First Classes, eighteen- fold, and on the standard most 
favorable to mediocrity of Valued Classes, from four to five-fold ; 
2°, in the less important department of D. M., above ten times 
on the more ambitious criterion of First Classes, and nearly 
twelve times on the humbler criterion of Valued Classes. 

This difference of House and House ought, indeed, to fill us 
with astonishment ; at least it utterly astonished me. For though 
prepared to expect not a small, I was wholly unprepared for the 
mighty, contrast which the collegial comparison in the Table 
manifests. I was aware, of course, that men — that youths are 
in ordinary little more than the passive reflectors of the education 
which they chance to receive ; but I was certainly pre-disposed 
to rate far higher the exceptive number of those, who, in a Uni- 
versity like Oxford, would pursue their studies independently of 
all external constraint, and to whom the offices of a Tutor should 
prove, in fact, more impediments than aids. Others too there 
were, and in numbers not to be overlooked, whom no tuition 
could avail to raise out of the low level to which native incapac- 
ity had doomed them. Finally, there were many, who sought, 
privately and without their College, for the tuition which they 
could not, satisfactorily at least, find publicly or within. AH 
these classes were distributed throughout the Houses, and all it 
behooved to take into account, as tending to bring the Houses to 
an average equality. On this equalizing tendency I had calculated 
much — too much indeed. For the statistics of the Table show 
how uniformly, notwithstanding every equalizing tendency, rank 
in the academical examinations is the result of a right prepara- 
tory tuition, and how rarely the honors of the University are 
won, except by competitors trained to victory through a course 
of sound collegial discipline. But such a discipline, though such 
be its effect, how seldom, if ever, is it now afforded by the Col- 
leges — in full efficiency ? For, admitting that the higher and 
fewer Colleges perform, in Oxford, all that, as educational insti- 
tutes, shey should and can ; still on the other hand, the lower 
and more numerous Houses are seen, on the criterion of the 
University itself, to fail most signally in this essential function, 



684 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

which they pretend, and that exclusively, to discharge. Yet, in 
the midst of this manifold and obtrusive defalcation, the Church 
and the State look on ; the nation is quietly defrauded of the 
education for which it has especially provided ; while the exclu- 
sive privileges are still suffered to subsist, long after the condi- 
tions, on which alone these were originally conceded, have been 
illegally suspended. " Not individual persons only," says the 
great Herder, "but schools and universities, outlive themselves. 
In semblance, their body still survives, while the soul has long 
been fled, or they glide about, like shades of the departed, among 
the figures of the living. Once were they so useful, and there 
lay in them the germ of a great development. But all has its 
appointed limit. The form which still remains has overlived it- 
self. Alas ! to what a century do they recall us ! To the strange 
tastes of long buried generations ! There they stand, establish- 
ments of a by-gone time, in all its pressure ! They follow not 
the genius of the age, and, incapable of renewing with it their 
youth, have thus fallen from their ancient usefulness." But the 
English Universities, and Oxford in particular, though ancient, 
are not so much superannuated as diseased. Though enfeebled, 
certainly, they do not so much manifest the symptoms of death, 
as of a suspension, or rather metastasis, of life; for their original, 
their statutory constitution is superseded, but superseded, not for 
public, but for private, advantage. The better hope, therefore, 
of their restoration. For the old and legal is gone ; while no re- 
spect is due to the modern, which has only too long been suffer- 
ed perfidiously to usurp its place. Oxford may, indeed, be re- 
sembled to a venerable oak ; whose abated vigor is diverted from 
heart to bark, but this cortical life, now only manifested in it3 
suckers, is, in fact, wholly expended in these parasitic offshoots, 
which, while they waste without replacing, are allowed to repre- 
sent, as they conceal, the parent tree. 

— i " Stat magni nominis umbra. 

Qualis frugifero quercus sublimis in agro 
Exuvias veteres populi, sacrataque gestans 
Dona ducum ; nee jam validis radicibus hserens, 
Pondere fixa suo est, nudosque per aera ramos 
Effundens, trunco, non frondibus, efficit umbram : 
At quamvis primo nutet casura sub Euro, 
Et quamvis circum sylvae se robore tollant, 
Sola tamen ccUtur." 

II. Such being Oxford as it is, I now proceed to Oxford (I 
shall not say, as it should, but) as it might be. For I would pro- 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 685 

pose a scheme of improvement, manifest and easy ; but not insin- 
uate that a better might not be devised. In fact, as already- 
indicated, I look not alone nor principally to what is theoretically 
the best, but to what is practically the most feasible. I limit 
myself, likewise, to the fundamental faculty, that of Arts or libe- 
ral instruction, and to the lower department of that faculty — to 
that, in which alone the University now pretends to educate. 
From all higher and more ambitious proposals I refrain ; refrain 
from all schemes of reform, which may lightly be desired, but 
may not lightly be accomplished. I would suggest obvious reme- 
dies for obvious vices ; and should prefer making use of the means 
already in appliance, to seeking after others which may specula- 
tively be superior. Accordingly, were the institutions of domes- 
tic superintendence and tutorial instruction, even in themselves 
defective, I should be unwilling to supersede them ; for the simple 
reason, that they are already established, and consuetudinary. It 
is easy also to wish, that Headships and Fellowships were, as 
they ought to be, made the reward of literary eminence ; but such 
a wish, it would be difficult if not impossible to realize. To found, 
therefore, a scheme of academical reform on this or any similar 
ideal, would be to frustrate it by anticipation. Any measure of 
practical reform ought, therefore, in my opinion, to attempt only 
to remove intolerable abuses, and to cure them only by the least 
violent substitutions. This, at least, in the first instance ; for 
Reformation should be gradual. The great end toward perfec- 
tion is, indeed, to initiate improvement. Every step forward 
necessitates an ulterior advance ; so true is the adage which old 
Hesiod has sung — 'Ap^rj tf/juav Travros. Thus the Oxford Exam- 
ination statutes were the first efforts of the University to rise out 
of the slough of abasement into which it had long subsided j 1 and 

1 Before the Examination Statutes passed, after the commencement of the present 
century, Oxford awarded her degrees, from first to last, without trial, and independ- 
ently of acquirement. — Crousaz, writing in 1725, says : — " In Oxford the new philos- 
ophy is known as little to its members as to the Australian savages ; and M. Bernard 
pleasantly remarks, that these worthies are a century or two behind their age, and 
perhaps will so eternally remain. The spirit of Protestantism is hardly breathed in 
Oxford." (Logique, P. I., S. i., c. 6.) — Wendeborn, who traveled through England 
before 1788, gives an amusing account of the Prases, Respondent, and the three Op- 
ponents, consuming the statutory time in profound silence, and the study of a novel 
or other entertaining work. (Beschreibung, &c, III. p. 218, 219.) — A similar de- 
scription of the ceremonial is given by Vicesimus Knox (who, if I recollect, was him- 
self of Oxford). It will be found in his Moral Essays, but the book is not at hand. — 
Cambridge, till lately, if not to the present day, bestows its degree on all and sundry 
who bring up a minimum of mathematics. 



686 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

the Examination, now affording an undeniable rule, by which to 
evince, that the Oxford Houses do not, in general, perform their 
arrogated office of instruction, in any satisfactory degree, at once 
annihilates, by stultifying, all resistance on their part, while it 
can not fail of determining, in public opinion, the necessity of an 
academical reform. But, in truth, the most zealous champions 
in the cause, may be looked for in those intelligent individuals, 
whom accident has connected with the collegial interest, and in 
the less efficient Houses ; for it is they who will naturally be most 
impressed with the academical inadequacy of their colleagues — 
most ashamed of the inferior level of their Colleges — and most 
active in originating and carrying out any feasible measure of 
improvement. — But the Examination not only manifests the 
urgency, it likewise affords the possibility, of reform. Through 
the influence of the Examination, the standard of literary qualifi- 
cation has in Oxford been gradually rising ; and accordingly the 
melioration would now be easy, which formerly could have only 
resulted in failure. Though far inferior to the Oxford Examina- 
tion, that of Cambridge, as earlier, caused likewise an earlier 
advance. For without such a criterion, how perverse soever it 
may be, the collegial elections would now, as heretofore, be there 
throwing merit out of account : and there the Tutors might still 
be whistling to their pupils the old tune, which, as pupils, had 
been piped to them ; — Cambridge might still be Cartesian in 
Physics, as Physics, are still, indeed, its peculiar Philosophy, and 
Mathematics all its Logic. 

In the subsequent observations I shall pursue the following 
order : — i.) Recapitulate the contrast between the legal and ille- 
gal in the education which the great English Universities, and in 
particular Oxford, afford in their fundamental faculty; — ii.) State 
the ends, the full accomplishment of which constitutes the perfec- 
tion of an University, as a school of liberal study ; — iii.) Compare 
the means, now at work, especially in Oxford, with the ends which 
such a seminary ought to fulfill ; — and iv.) Suggest such changes 
as may most easily be made, to render that school a more efficient 
instrument for the purpose of general and preparatory education. 

i.) Contrast between the legal and illegal, in the education which, 
with more especial reference to Oxford, the English Universi- 
ties afford in their fundamental faculty. 

1°, Be jure : The necessary academical discipline is public and 



OXFOilD AS IT MIGHT BE. 6S7 

common : given by the University in public prelection and public 
exercise. — De facto: The sole academical discipline is private and 
peculiar ; given by the several Houses in their domestic tuition. 
(See pp. 386, 387, 436, 439.) 

2°, Dejure : The University stands provided with a large staff 
of Prselectors or Professors.— De facto : These are now extinct, 
with the exception of a few, that remain " the shadows of a 
name." All public Exercise, of old thought justly more import- 
ant than prelection, is, in like manner, defunct — nay, even for- 
gotten. (See pp. 390, 394, 421, 439, 440, 442.) 

3°, Dejure : The domestic instructor or Tutor, is any respect- 
able graduate, chosen by the pupil, nor does it even appear that 
they must be of the same House ; and the Tutor's principal func- 
tion is, by statute, to look after his pupil's hair, clothes, and 
catechism. — De facto: The Tutorial office is exclusively usurped 
by the College Fellows, who are seldom Fellows from any literary 
merit ; out of them the Tutor is nominated by the College Head, 
who is seldom Head for his ability or learning ; 1 to a Tutor, so 

1 I have elsewhere (p. 395, sq.) shown, how the collegial foundations were, in Ox- 
ford, not intended to supply ability, but to relieve want ; and that their members were, 
in general, not dependent for their appointment on any academical merit. In addition 
thereto, and with special reference to the Heads, I may adduce the testimony of Mr. 
Ward, late Fellow of Trinity College, and Deputy High Steward of the University of 
Oxford. In the Preface to his translation of the Oxford University Statutes (1845) 
he says: 

"There is nothing, therefore, in the original destination of a Head of a College, or 
in the statutory terms of his elevation, which involves his aptitude for a governor of 
the universal academical body. But is he at all better qualified for the purpose under 
the alterations of the old collegiate constitutions, which a change of the national reli- 
gion, and no less of the national manners, has effected in the long course of four or 
five hundred years 1 The maintenance of the Roman Catholic Faith being the ground- 
work of collegiate foundations, the founders have, in almost all cases, insisted on their 
establishments being governed by an ecclesiastical person ; and even where the stat- 
utes are not imperative on this point, the natural course of things leads to the same 
result. Of all the nineteen Colleges, only one at this time is governed by a layman. 
The Heads of Colleges are, as has been said before, elective ; and it will readily ap- 
pear, that if the founders themselves left the general advantage of the University quite 
out of view, while considering the qualifications of their principal College officer, the 
interest and position of the statutory electors are nearly concerned not to supply the 
defective ingredient. On the avoidance of the Headship, one place is of course gained 
by every Fellow who has a vested interest in the foundation, but an adroit exercise 
of the franchise may convert the single vacancy into two or more steps of advance- 
ment to the junior members, and the election, in consequence, usually falls on the in- 
cumbent of the best living or other office or preferment belonging to the society, and his 
promotion creates a fresh vacancy, perhaps a series of vacancies. But it may be said 
that the motive of interest would only attach to a portion of the electors; another 
remains, which must equally affect the whole body, or at least the residents. All the 
College codes give most extensive powers to the Head of the society ; he must be 
constantly in residence, too, within the same precincts as the Fellows ; it stands to 



638 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

qualified and appointed, every intrant to University and College 
must subject himself: and on this Fellow, or his associate Tutors, 
is the University now wholly dependent for all the academical 
discipline afforded to the alumnus. (See pp. 391-398, 421. 

As contrary to reason, contrary to statute, and contrary to oath, 
the present system (if system it may be called), can not long en- 
dure. The necessity of perjury must be made to cease ; law and 
fact must again be brought into union, and their subsequent 
separation should be precluded. Finally, the actual ought to be 
approximated to the rational. Such approximation is not, how- 
ever, to be accomplished by a mere return from the modern and 
illegal to the old and statutory. For though the statutory con- 
stitution of the University and its instruction was, in former ages, 
far superior to the mutilated fragment of education now long 
alone precariously attempted by intrusive, interested, and incom- 
petent means, it would, as has been said, be a rash inference to 

reason, therefore, that a much more effective and natural consideration in the choice 
of a future next-door neighbor, who should be a censor, and must be a superior, will 
be his character for complaisance and inoffensiveness. rather than any overstrained anx 
icty for the honor or advantage ivhicli will accrue to the University. A good, easy Head 
of a clerical club will be in much greater demand among its thirty or forty Fellows and 
incumbents, than a gifted sage, if any such the society possesses, who will exert himself 
to improve the system of instruction pursued in the University . 

" If, therefore, the disposition to acquiesce in the existing state of things within 
the walls of his own College, constitutes, in all likelihood, the most operative recom- 
mendation for the Head of a House, what hopes can be fairly entertained that he will 
be more energetic in his accessory character of a Governor of the general academical 
corporation 1 But it is only necessary to look to their own volume of the Caroline 
statutes, to form a judgment of the legislative capacity of the Board ; for they have 
there put it on record, under the name of Additions to Laud's Code. The staple of 
these additions is the substitution of one form of words for another, equally untrue or 
inapplicable to the present times ; fresh incense offered to mere rank and wealth, and 
new sumptuary enactments, which must be illusory, so long as Laud's Statute (Tit. 
hi. sect. 1) is suffered to remain unrepealed, and to drive all the Undergraduates of the 
University into some twenty Colhges and Halls, never calculated by their founders for 
the superintendence of a fifth of their existing numbers. It may be sufficient here to 
state, generally, that at about the commencement of the present century it became 
apparent to the University itself, that, either from the natural working of the Caroline 
Code, or from its formalities only having been kept up, while its spirit had been allow- 
ed to expire, Oxford had virtually abdicated, instruction, and was converted into a mere 
market of degrees for those persons who could throw away the time and afford the 
pecuniary means, which had become the chief conditions for acquiring them. An ef- 
fort was therefore indispensable, and the University was saved from extinction as a 
nursery of learning, by the New Examination Statute — a vast improvement, no doubt, 
upon the previous method, but still confessedly, at the present day, after forty years 
experience, and a multitude of amendments, liable to very great and striking objections. 

" From a legislative body, composed like that which has been described, it is hope- 
less to expect a?iy comprehensive scheme of reformation proceeding from itself: perhaps 
it is also unreasonable, for it never has legislated independently on a great scale," &c 
(p x. sq.) 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 689 

conclude, that what is old, and even statutory, is all good ; — that 
what is new, and even illegal, is all vicious. This leads us to the 
second head of consideration. 

ii.) The Ends which a University in its fundamental faculty, 
that is, as a seminary of liberal accomplishment, is bound to 
propose. 

But before stating the ends of a University, it is proper to 
premise a distinction and explanation. For a University in ordi- 
nary, and in ordinary acceptation, involves two very different 
things : — involving 1°, what is properly the University, a school, 
to wit, for liberal or general knowledge : and 2°, a collection of 
special schools, for one, two, three, or more of the learned profes- 
sions. In the former respect, the student is considered, as an end 
unto himself ; his perfection, as a man simply, being the aim of 
his education. This is the end proposed in, what is academically 
known as, the Faculty of Arts or of Philosophy. In the latter 
respect, the learner is not vieived as himself an end, that end 
being now something out of himself: for not his perfection as a 
man, but his dexterity as a professional man — in a word, his use- 
fulness as an instrument, has become the aim of his scientific pre- 
paration. This end is that proposed in, what are academically 
known as, the Faculties of Theology, Law, Medicine, &c. ; and 
in this relation, a University is, in fact, only a supplemental and 
contingent aggregation of special schools, the only connection that 
these have with each other, or with the University, being, that 
they all hold out to be liberal, that is, they all hold out to educate 
to professions which presuppose always a liberal accomplishment, 
if not always an education in the liberal faculty, or faculty of arts. 
In certain Universities, indeed, and in certain of their professional 
faculties, a degree is now given without a liberal education ; but 
in these cases, the profession has ceased to be liberal or learned, 
and the instruction by the academical faculty is really that of a 
mere special school. Pro tanto, the University has, in fact, 
illegally abrogated itself; and it would be difficult to say, whether 
the English or the Scottish Universities have acted more contrary 
to law and common sense, in their grant of medical degrees, the 
former without professional, the latter without liberal, education. 
The latter certainly is the more dangerous to the public, if the 
more profitable to the medical professors. — Nor is historical fact 
here at variance with philosophical theory. This distinction of a 

Xx 



690 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

University into two parts — into a part essential or fundamental, 
and into a part contingent or accessory, is shown in the chrono- 
logical develooment of academical institutions. The older Uni- 
ts -i 

versities (as Paris, Oxford, &c.) originated in the fundamental 
Faculty of Arts, the other Faculties being subsequently by acci- 
dent, and at different times, one or more of them, annexed. And 
at present, the English Universities, though still allowed to exer- 
cise the privilege of granting degrees in the special faculties, 
have, it may be fairly said, long virtually abandoned the relative 
instruction ; so that Oxford and Cambridge are now what they 
were at first — schools exclusively of liberal instruction, but of 
liberal instruction, it should be added, not in all, but only in cer- 
tain arbitrary branches. 

Limiting, therefore, our view by the limitation of the English 
Universities, to the essential faculty alone, the abstract ends 
necessarily proposed by a University may be stated, as in ail, 
three : — 1°, to supply competent instruction ; 2°, to excite the 
requisite exertion ; and 3°, to grant a true certificate of pro- 
ficiency. These being the ends which a University necessarily 
proposes, the degree in which it accomplishes these, will neces- 
sarily determine the degree of its perfection. 

To accomplish these abstract ends, a University must employ 
certain concrete means. But though means are necessarily con* 
ducive to ends, it is not necessary that each several end should 
be exclusively effected by its several mean. One mean may con- 
duce to several ends, and one end may be subserved by a plu- 
rality of means ; nay, what is directly an end, may also indi- 
rectly operate as a mean. Thus, the Examination for a certifi- 
cate of proficiency, i. e. for a Degree, though its immediate end 
be the ascertainment of a certain minimum of learning, yet, me- 
diately, this Examination, with its proximate end, may become 
a powerful mean toward another end, the excitement, to wit, of 
exertion in the student. This, therefore, makes the disintrica- 
tion and abstract distinction of the ends and means proposed by 
a University inconvenient, and without detail impossible ; accord- 
ingly, in conformity to convenience, I shall simply enumerate 
(attempting no speculative classification), as ends, all that a 
University should accomplish, although these accomplishings 
may, strictly considered, often partake more of the character of 
means. 

First end — As a University, even in all its faculties, can not 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 691 

teach the omne scibile, and as there is an order and subordina- 
tion among the departments of knowledge ; a University, more 
especially in its fundamental faculty, is bound to secure by pre- 
ference those studies which, supposed by the others, are neces- 
sary, not only on their own account, but for the sake of ulterior 
progress. In other words : a University, though it can not com- 
pass the cycle of knowledge, is required to supply its introduc- 
tion. This manifest principle has, however, too frequently been 
neglected in our modern Universities — nay, even reversed. Teach- 
ing every thing, they teach nothing : — 

NrjTTLOt, ovk evorjaav oacp irXeov rj[it(7v Travros. 

Second end — A University should supply competent, and ex- 
clude incompetent, instructors. This supposes that the instructor 
should possess not merely an empirical knowledge of his subject, 
but a philosophical; that he should know it, not merely as a 
complexus of facts, but as a system of effects and causes ; and 
that, besides his synthetic comprehension of the whole, he should 
have analytically examined how the parts are dependent on each 
other, and how they mutually concur to the constitution of the 
whole. If he teach an author, he must be familiar, not merely 
with the work he teaches, but with all the writings of his author, 
and the relative opinions of the learned. If he teach a doctrine, 
he must be acquainted with it, not merely in itself, but in its 
connections, scientific and historical. In short, as Aristotle admi- 
rably shows- — " The one exclusive sign of a thorough knowledge 
is the power of teaching." (Metaph. I. i.) But how many 
teachers are destitute of all this knowledge, and never even sus- 
pect their deficiency ! How many confidently profess, who are 
wholly unqualified, to instruct !— But beside his ability to teach, 
an academical instructor should be actuated by a good will. H e 
should be ready to solve any difficulty propounded, and to afford 
aid and advice to his pupils in the conduct of their studies. 
This was, indeed, enjoined by statute in several of the older 
Universities ; and in Oxford the public Readers (now defunct) 
were required to remain for a certain time daily after lecture, in 
order to answer all pertinent questions that might be put to 
them. 

Third end— A. University ought likewise to place conspicuously 
before the eyes of the student, and, of course, more especially to 
secure in its instructors, high living examples of erudition and 



692 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.j 

ability. For, in proportion as the academical standard is elevat- 
ed, will be the discontent of its alumni with any pitch of attain- 
ment inferior to the highest, and their consequent effort toward an 
ever loftier accomplishment ; whereas, the natural result of a low 
standard in the teacher, will be (independently of other evils) 
self-contentment and conceit, or disgust and inertion, in the taught. 
The beginning — the middle — the end, indeed, of wisdom, is the 
consciousness of ignorance ; the consciousness of ignorance is thus 
the condition of progress. Hence the aim of every intelligent 
governor of a University has been, even apart from formal in- 
struction, to obtrude the highest patterns of learned talent on the 
immediate observation of its teachers and its taught, in order to 
repress, in all, any tolerance of mediocrity : aware, with Bion, 
that " The conceit of knowledge is the arrestment of progress ;" 
as with Seneca — " Multos potuisse ad sapientiam pervenire, nisi 
putassent, se pervenisse." This enlightened policy I have else- 
where endeavored to illustrate. 1 (See pp. 359-362.) 

Fourth end — As the student comes (or must be supposed to 
come) to the University without a love of knowledge for its own 
sake, as indeed he comes there, not with studious habits already 
formed, but, in fact, with these to be acquired ; and as there 
are likewise objects of strong alien interest continually soliciting 
him to remit his efforts ; a University is bound to apply such 
external incitements as, by relation to his previous dispositions, 
may overbalance all counter seductions, and render his studies, 
from the first to the last, more pleasurable than their intermission. 
For, as Isocrates and Aristotle have well expressed it : — " The 
roots of dicipline are bitter, while the fruits are sweet ;" and 
as Plato, followed by his greater disciple, untranslatably says : — 
"Ilav ri6o$ hia e#o?." Such a stimulus is furnished in the desire 
of distinction — in the goad of emulation — affections strong in all, 



1 The universal sense of mankind has indeed established this as a maxim of educa- 
tion. The following rise to my recollection : 

The Arabian Sage : — " A man is wise, so long as he seeks after wisdom, but a fool 
when he conceits it to be mastered." 

The Rabbi Eleazar : — "Where there is no reverence, there is no instruction." 

" Bra*sicanus asked of Erasmus — How a man might become learned 1 The imme- 
diate answer was : — ' If he haunted the company of the learned ; if he listened sub- 
missively to the sayings of the learned ; if he diligently read and re-read the writings of 
the learned; but above all, if he never deemed that he himself was learned.' " 

This may enable us to solve the seeming paradox : — In a country, where learning 
is rare, the men of learning are common ; in a country, where learning is common, the 
men of learning are rare 



OXFOR.P AS IT MIGHT BE. 693 

hut characteristically strongest in the young (" lovers of honor, 
yet still more lovers of victory") ; and these, if they be constantly 
and efficiently applied, determine a sedulous application in the 
pursuit of knowledge, even while such application may still he 
irksome in itself. "In learning," says Bacon, "the flight will 
be slow [and low] without some feathers of ostentation ;" and 
thus is it, that, through emulation and the passion for distinction, 
we are enabled to fulfill his precept: — "As man's nature runs 
either to herbs or weeds, let us seasonably water the one and de- 
stroy the other" For, while mental effort is the one condition of 
all mental improvement, yet this effort is at first and for a time 
painful: positively painful, in proportion as it is intense; and 
comparatively painful, as it abstracts from other and positively 
pleasurable activities. It is painful, because its energy is imper- 
fect, difficult, forced. But, as the effort is gradually perfected, 
gradually facilitated, it becomes gradually pleasing ; and when, 
finally perfected, that is, when the power is fully developed, and 
the effort, changed into a spontaneity, becomes an exertion abso- 
lutely easy, it remains purely, intensely, and alone unsatiably 
pleasurable. For pleasure is nothing but the concomitant or reflex 
of the unforced and unimpeded energy of a natural faculty or ac- 
quired habit ; the degree and permanence of the pleasure being 
also ever in proportion to the intensity and purity of the mental 
energy. The great postulate in education is, therefore — to induce 
the pupil to enter and to persevere in such a course of effort, good, 
in its result, and delectable, but primarily and in itself irksome. 
" There is no royal road to learning." " The Gods," says Epi- 
charmus, " sell us every thing for toil ;" and the curse inherited 
from Adam, that " in the sweat of his face, man should eat his 
bread," holds good of every human acquisition. For, " man liv- 
eth not by bread alone ;" 

" Vivere 

Non esse solum vescier aethere, 
Sed laude virtutisque fructu 

Egregiani satiare mentem." 

And with immediate reference to the young ; it would be pecu- 
liar folly to expect, that they, especially, should be ever made to 
climb the hill of knowledge, stinted of their natural requirements 
by the way — the refreshment of honor, the stimulant of compe- 
tition. These affections are implanted in us, implanted, conse- 
quently for the wisest purposes : and although they may, of 
course, be misapplied, the inference, from the possibility of their 



694 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

abuse to the inexpediency of their employment, is futile. Nothing, 
indeed, can evince a profounder ignorance of human nature, or a 
more disgraceful neglect of the most efficient means within its 
grasp, than for a University — than, indeed, for any seminary of 
education, to leave unapplied these great promoting principles of 
juvenile activity ; and passively to take for granted, that its pu- 
pils will act precisely as they ought, though with every tempta- 
tion seducing them from effort, and no appropriate inducement 
supplied in favor of studious exertion. 

Fifth end — As knowledge (man being now considered as an 
end to himself) is only valuable as it exercises, and by exercise 
develops and invigorates, the mind ; so a University, in its liberal 
faculty, should specially prefer those objects of study which call 
forth the strongest and most unexclusive energy of thought, and 
so teach them too, that this energy shall be most fully elicited 
in the student. For speculative knowledge, of whatever kind, is 
only profitable to the student, in his liberal cultivation, in as much 
as it supplies him with the object and occasion of exerting his 
faculties ; since powers are only developed in proportion as they 
are exercised, that is, put forth into energy. The mere possession 
of scientific truths is, for its own sake, valueless ; and education 
is only education, in as much as it at once determines and enables 
the student to educate himself. Nor is there time to lose. In 
fact, it is now or never; for, as Rousseau truly says : — " L'inha- 
bitude de penser dans la jeunesse en ote la faculte durant le 
reste de la vie." — The objects of knowledge, which combine more 
entirely this end with the first, ought thus to be the principal 
branches of primary academical education. To determine what 
these objects, what these branches are, would lead us into a dis- 
cussion which, at present, I willingly avoid ; but the educational 
exercises employed by Universities in calling forth the self acti- 
vity of their alumni, are the following : — 1. Examination ; 2. 
Disputation ; 3. Repetition ; 4. "Written Composition ; 5. Teach- 
ing, in order to learn ; 6. Conversation with, questioning of, the 
learned : 7. Social study. — Of these in detail. 

1. Examination. — By this is meant Examination in the course 
of study : and perhaps, in the circumstances of our modern Uni- 
versities, this, of all academical exercises, is the one most gene- 
rally useful ; provided it be fully and fairly carried out — which 
it rarely if ever is. — In the first place, it affords a good, if not, 
indeed, the best of fields, in which emulation may be eKerted ; 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 695 

but the condition of this exertion is that the competitors be keen. 
Keen however they will be, if the examination be regular, fre- 
quent, and well conducted — if their own number be large, and 
the individuals not too unequal — finally, if the competition be 
public, and the accruing honor signal. Examination is thus in* 
incompatible with inertion. — In the second place, it constrains to 
accurate, minute, and comprehensive study — in a word, secures 
the knowledge of a subject, in whole and in part, in itself and in 
its relations ; (a repetition of the words, either of the book read 
or of the lecture heard, should, of course, be disallowed). It thus 
calls out self activity, and requiring clear and distinct thinking, 
both in examiner and examinee, counteracts the prevailing pesti- 
lence of slovenly, desultory, effeminate reading. — In the third 
place, it educates to presence of mind. — In the fourth, to prompt 
and precise expression. — In the fifth, it abates conceit, and con- 
vinces of deficiency. — In the sixth, it impressively teaches, even 
the mere auditor. 

Examination can be realized in two forms- — forms which may, 
indeed, should be combined. For it is — 1° oral ; 2° in writing'. 1 

1 The following is a very compendious abridgment of what Melanchthon says in 
praise of academical Examinations, in his Declamation De Studiis Adolescentum 
(1529 1) The whole oration is well worthy of perusal : it will be found in his Decla- 
mationes, t. i., p. 486 ; in the Selectae Declamationes, t. i., p. 465 sq. ; in the Corpus 
Reformatorum, vol, xi. p. 181 ; and in other collections. — " No academical exercise 
can be more useful than that of Examination. It whets the desire of learning, it en- 
hances the solicitude of study, while it animates the attention to whatever is taught. 
Every student is alarmed, lest aught should escape him which it behooves him to ob- 
serve. This anxiety incites him also to canvass every thing with accuracy, knowing 
that he must fully and perspicuously explain his understanding of each several doc- 
trine. In this fear, is found the strongest stimulus to the labor of learning ; without 
it, study subsides into a cold, sleepy, lifeless formality. What we have only heard or 
read, come to us like the shadows of a dream, and like the shadows of a dream, depart ; 
but all that we elaborate for ourselves become part and parcel of our intellectual pos- 
sessions. But this elaboration is forced upon us by examination ; examination, there- 
fore, may be called the life of studies, without which reading, and even meditation, is 
dead. — Against prejudice and error, there is no surer antidote than examination ; for 
by this the intellect is explored, its wants detected and supplied, its faults and failings 
corrected. — Examination, likewise, fosters facility of expression, counteracts pertur- 
bation and confusion, inures to coolness and promptitude of thought. — Not less useful 
is examination in restraining the course of juvenile study within legitimate bounda- 
ries. Nothing is more hurtful, as nothing is more common, than vague and tumultu- 
ary reading, which inflates with the persuasion, without conferring the reality, of eru- 
dition. Wherefore, if examination, brought no other advantage than that it counter- 
acts the two greatest pests of education, found, indeed, usually combined, sloth, to wit, 
and arrogance ; — for this reason alone should examination be cherished in our Univer- 
sities. Against sloth there is no goad sharper or more efficacious than examination ; 
and as to arrogance, examination is the very school of humility and improvement 
By no other discipline is a soaring conceit so effectually taken down; and this is the 
reason, why self-satisfied pretenders ever fly examination, while those who think less 



696 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

2. Disputation. — This exercise is now obsolete, in fact, through- 
out our British Universities, and has only a very partial and pre- 
carious existence in any other. Disputation is, however, in a 
certain sort, the condition of all improvement. In the mental as 
in the material world, action and reaction are ever in proportion ; 
and Plutarch well observes, that as motion would cease, were con- 
tention taken out of the physical universe, so all human progress 
would cease, were contention taken out of the moral. Academical 
disputation, in fact, requiring calls out, and calling out educates 

of the little that they know, than of the much that they know not, resort to it as the 
most efficacious mean of improvement." 

The subject of academical Examination is also treated well and at great length by 
a distinguished contemporary of Melanchthon, the Flemish theologian Hyperius, but 
with more especial reference to his professional department. See his Opuscula Theo- 
logica (1570), pp. 364-436. After these older authorities in favor of examination, 
independently of its manifest utility, it may surprise us, that this exercise has, jt may 
be roundly averred, been long obsolete in the Protestant Universities of the Empire ; 
for the "Examinatoria" occasionally and privately opened by individual professors, to 
such students as may choose to attend, are not worthy of being mentioned as excep- 
tions. It is not, however, difficult to explain the want ; though Holland, and there- 
after Germany, are the countries, where learning has long flourished most unexclu- 
sively in all its departments, and the Universities comprised the largest complement 
of the most learned men. For, in the first place, the excellence of their academical 
patronage, supplying the Universities with the highest quality of erudition, a course 
of professorial lectures afforded to the student instruction, better probably than the best 
publication upon the subject These lectures, therefore, afforded what could not other- 
wise be so well obtained ; and though merely teaching, the University was not super- 
fluous — as elsewhere. — But in the second, place, what is of far more importance, there 
was, in general, no compulsion of attendance on any one academical course. In Ger- 
many, a professor had no monopoly of subject ; he could lecture on any branch be- 
longing to his faculty, though that had been previously selected by a colleague ; and 
the same could every other professor, ordinary or extraordinary, indeed any qualified 
graduate of the faculty, do by him : indeed no exclusive privilege was accorded to 
any course. In these circumstances, there being no compulsion on attendance, exam- 
ination could not be enforced ; while, contemned by professors, and not desired by 
students, it naturally fell into desuetude. It was even opposed, and that on high au- 
thority, as contrary to academic libert} r . — In the third place, it was less required in 
Germany than in other countries ; for, to say nothing of other causes, literary merit 
being there always secure of promotion, and no literary merit there taken upon trust, 
the result was (in the words of a celebrated professor of Goettingen), that " the indus- 
try of the German students was so great, that it became more requisite to restrain 
them from over-work, than to excite them to a profitable employment of their time," 
&c. — (Meiners, kurze Darstelhmg - - d. Goettingen (1808), p. 36.) 

Still, the want of examination in the German Universities was felt by intelligent 
writers on the theory of education ; and beside the incidental testimonies in approval 
of the exercise, to be found in the treatises on academical instruction by Fichte, 
Schleiermacher, Tittmann, and others, its restoration was in 1825 formally argued by 
the celebrated Professor Eichstsedt of Jena, in two solemn addresses to the University, 
in his capacity of Programmatarius, or Public Orator, entitled — " De Examinilus in 
Academias Revocandis." But Eichstsedt was not peculiarly qualified for the work; 
and had he merely reprinted the Declamation of Melanchthon, of which, however, he 
was unaware, he would have done more toward the result for which he contended, 
than by his own eloquence in its commendation. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 697 

to, the most important intellectual virtues ; — to presence of mind, 
to dominion over our faculties, to promptitude of recollection and 
of thought, and withal, though animating emulation, to a perfect 
command of temper. It stimulates also to a more attentive and 
profounder study of the matters to be thus discussed ; it more 
deeply impresses the facts and doctrines taught upon the mind ; 
and, finally, what is of peculiar importance, and peculiarly ac- 
complished by rightly regulated disputation, it checks all tendency 
toward irrelevancy and disorder in statement, by astricting the 
disputants to a pertinent and precise and logically predetermined 
order of the evolution of their reasonings. Accordingly, in the 
best of the older Universities (as in Louvain), nothing was taught 
by prelection in the fundamental faculty, which was not also gone 
over in the exercises of disputation and examination. 1 



1 The greatest contrast between the older education afforded in the Universities and 
the more modern, is perhaps displayed in regard to the exercise of Disputation ; and, 
assuredly, the comparison is not in favor of the latter. — Before the invention of print- 
ing, Universities were useful, nay indispensable, as organs of publication and learned 
intercourse. They were comparatively few in number ; spoke one learned language ; 
professed a common faith ; the crowds whom they attracted from the most distant 
countries were immense ; and one academical teacher might then dispense to hundreds, 
it might be to thousands, the information of which, except in such a literary centre, 
they could hardly have become aware. Yet these same schools justly considered their 
function of prelection as in importance greatly inferior to their function of exercise ; 
and among the exercises which they sedulously inforced, that of disputation, regular 
and frequent, was the principal. With this, indeed, no other academical act was per- 
mitted to interfere. During the seasons of disputation all other instruction was sus- 
pended ; and every mean employed to secure an auditory the most numerous. — On the 
other hand, since the art of printing has totally superseded the Universities, as instru- 
ments of publication ; and since their indefinite multiplication in every country, the 
divisions of religion, the introduction of the vernacular, combined, in general, with ex- 
clusive privileges to individual chairs, and vicious systems of appointment to these 
chairs themselves, have reduced Universities, from cosmopolite and catholic, to local 
and sectarian schools, schools likewise often monopolizing instruction, but with in- 
structors comparatively inferior both in ability and learning : strange to say, the whole 
function of a University is now, for the most part, concentrated in the useless office of 
communicating information ; that is, the academical teacher or professor reads to his 
'auditors a course of lectures upon subjects which they, with far greater convenience, 
might study for themselves in books — lectures, too, which were they ever printed, no 
one would probably ever dream of reading ; while disputation (if not every other ex- 
ercise), which public seminaries alone can realize, is utterly abandoned and even un- 
known. — Thus the Universities, of old, ably and faithfully discharged their higher and 
their lower duties ; whereas of late, they attempt, too frequently, only what is of least 
importance, and attempt this minor duty, only through inefficient means. — But could 
disputation, the practical exercise of reasoning, be again restored (of course, in the 
vernacular of the disputants, and perhaps less limited, than of old, to mere logical form) 
I have no doubt that it would constitute an era in academical efficiency. Lord Bacon 
has indeed recommended this. For while testifying, that the practice of disputation 
renders the mind prompt and all-sided, he proposes the establishment of what he calls 
a College of Controversies. By such an institution would be obtained all the advant- 
ages of a Debating Society, but with others of the highest importance, which are 



698 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

3. Repetition. — As the end of study, is not merely to compass 
the knowledge of facts, hut in and from that knowledge to lay up 

hereby not supplied; at the same time the serious disadvantages would be corrected, 
which adhere to the practice of dabate, when not under logical regulation and intelli- 
gent control. (In a professional education for the bar, an institute for practice, under 
a competent professor, in which all the steps of a legal process should, by the students 
themselves, be regularly gone through from first to last; and in concrete examples of 
every variety of action — this would inure them to oral and written pleading before 
commencing practice, and compendiously supply, what can not now be obtained at all 
from books or lectures, and to obtain which, however inadequately, months and years 
are often spent in an attorney's or writer's office — a knowledge of form.) 

As it is, indeed, and out of school, all profitable study is a silent disputation — an 
intellectual gymnastic ; and the most improving books are pre? ; *Mv those which most 
excite the reader — to understand the author, to supply what he h. mitted, and to can- 
vass his facts and reasonings. To read passively, to learn — is, in reality, not to learn at 
all. In study, implicit faith, belief upon authority, is worse even than, for a time, 
erroneous speculation. To read profitably, we should read the authors, not most in 
unison with, but most adverse to, our opinions ; for whatever may be the case in the 
cure of bodies, enantiopathy and not homoeopathy, is the true medicine of minds. Ac- 
cordingly such sciences and such authors, as present only unquestionable truths, 
determining a minimum of self-activity in the student, are in a rational education, sub- 
jectively, naught. Those sciences and authors, on the contrary, as constrain the 
student to independent thought, are, whatever be their objective certainty, subjectively, 
educationally, best. — In this respect, no writer is to be compared with Aristotle. For 
while his doctrine is, on every point, pre-eminently worth the knowing, still it is never 
to be adequately known, without considerable effort. He condenses always the most 
meaning in the fewest words ; he omits whatever may by attention be supplied ; he can, 
in fact, only be rightly understood, or intelligently admired, by a reader, who is familiar 
with his writings as a whole, and not unable to wrestle with the writer. Add to this, 
that the philosopher is an ancient ; and the ancient associations of thought and 
language are so different from the modern, that their study necessarily educates the 
mind to a liberal expansion, in emancipating it from those fetters which the accidental 
custom of time and country would otherwise impose. — But what renders the study of 
Aristotle so peculiarly profitable for the more advanced student, renders the Aristotelic 
works no less improper as a primary exercise of thought ; nor would it, in fact, be 
more absurd to inflict the food and exercise of Milo on the tyro athlete, than to intro- 
duce an unpracticed thinker to philosophy, through the speculations of the Stagirite. 
An Alma Mater should consider, with the Apostle, that its alumni at first " have need 
of milk, and not of strong meat ; but that strong meat belongeth to them as are of 
perfect age, and exercised to discern both good and evil." 

Of authorities in commendation of this exercise there need be no end. I shall quote 
only one, but he one of the highest; — the elder Scaliger. "Vives says — 'We profit 
more by silent meditation than by dispute.' This is not true. For, as from the 
collision of stones [light], so from the collision of minds truth, is struck out. I myself 
am an example. For often do I meditate alone, long, and intently ; but without an 
antagonist — unless I fight, all is in vain. A master indeed excites us to higher activity 
[than a book] ; but an opponent, be it by his obstinacy, be it by his wisdom, is to me 
twice a master." The words of Vives show, in what limitation this illustrious thinker 
meant his doctrine to be understood. " But in the sciences of contemplation, for medi- 
tation and exercise, we have silent thought and a pondering of the counter reasons ; 
thus do we penetrate more deeply into the knowledge of a thing, than by dispute or 
altercation, which more frequently confuses than sharpens the judgment." Both are 
right, and both their recommendations should be conjoined. Vives proposes one sort 
of intellectual effort, for one sort of science ; Scaliger, too exclusively, perhaps, pro- 
poses another, for all sciences, and, from his own personality, for all men. For, socth 
to say, the Prince of Verona in his pride, and pride of strength, was somewhat of the 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 699 

materials for speculation; so it is not the quantity read, but 
the degree of reading, which affords a profitable exercise to the 
student. Thus it is far more improving to read one (good) book 
ten times, than to read ten (good) books once ; and " non multa 
seel multum" little perhaps, but accurate, has, from ancient times, 
obtained the authority of an axiom in education, from all who 
had any title to express an opinion on the subject. " He who 
lives every where is at home no where ;" the friend of all is the 
friend of none ; nor is there, intellectually, a more contemptible 
character, than a Margites, " in omnibus aliquid, in toto nihil." 
And, as they are not the healthiest, who eat the most, but who 
digest the best ; so, a University, as an intellectual gymnasium, 
should consider, that its " mental dietetic" is tonic, not repletory 
— that its function is not to surfeit, but to stimulate, curiosity — 
not to pour in a maximum of information, but through its inform- 
ation (be it much or little), to draw forth a maximum of thought. 
He, therefore, who reads — to remember, does well ; to under- 
stand, does better ; but to judge, does best. — Nor did the Univer- 
sities of old repudiate the principle ; and the academical distinc- 
tion of Lectio Cursoria and Lectio Stataria would, were it ex- 
plained, show that, in them, theory and practice were in unison. 1 
Our modern stand, however, in this respect signally contrasted 
with our ancient, schools. For if, in theory, all authorities be at 
one, in regard to the importance of this principle ; how few are 
now the Universities which carry it out fairly into practice ? 
Nay, even in some of them, where it is not actually violated, the 
usage has been accidentally determined — less by enlightened 
views, than by the convenience of their teachers. 



literary gladiator. His great work is, indeed, purely polemical : yet how many subtle 
thoughts and important truths, all admirably expressed, does not this, as indeed all the 
writings of that extraordinary genius, contain, amid a mass, it may be allowed, of now 
uninteresting matters 1 

1 The older Universities, and particularly Louvain, constrained Repetition (recapit- 
ulation, revisal) by statute. See, among others Vernulaeus, p. 281 — Wyttenbach 
(Praef. ad Eel. Hist. p. xxix.) notices, that the wisdom of our ancestors had destined 
vacations, not only for the health and recreation of student and professor, but princi- 
pally " ad repetitionem instaurationemque studiorum. — Hsec feriata repetitio, ut per 
otium et minorem festinationem facta, plurimum valet ad interiorem intelligentiam ; 
plurimum habet et voluptatis continua progressuum animadversione, et incitamenti ad 
studii laborisque constantiam." — In Gcettingen, and some other German Universities, 
there is an order of inferior academical instructors, whose competency is guaranteed 
by public appointment ; they are called Rcpete?its, and go over with the students the 
professorial lectures. But there the professorial lectures are worth that trouble ; and 
the Repetents supply in part, but only in part, the want of public examination, &c. 



TOO APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

Independently, also, of its intrinsic importance, as a fundamen- 
tal maxim of education, the principle acquires a relative import- 
ance, as a prophylactic against the pernicious influence of the 
world in after life. In this respect, more especially, holds good 
— " Non scholae, sed vitse, discendum." For in the hustle of life, 
few are ahle to realize what they may deem the best ; and all of 
us are, more or less, seduced into the knowledge of a thousand 
things, tending only to amuse, tending only to distract and dissi- 
pate the mind. Superficiality (better expressed by the Grreek 
nuXvTTpayfiocrvvr), by the German Viehoisserey), is, in the world, 
indeed, the order of the day. Ours is emphatically " the reading 
age ;" and the many are now sure to accord their admiration, 
not to the scholar who really knows the best, but to the sciolist, 
who apparently knows the most. To counteract this hapless 
tendency, there is nothing but a good education — a sound erudi- 
tion ; but as these are now unfortunately, in this island espe- 
cially, at a sorry pass, with all our information, so various and 
so vast, we stand, as individuals, intellectual dwarfs, in contrast 
to the giants — the ignorant, but thinking, giants of antiquity. 
" Cuncta nihilque sumus/' (See p. 46.) 

4. Written Composition. — By this is understood an ordinary 
exercise in the course of academical instruction, and is either 
combined with, or apart from, oral examination. As an im- 
proving effort, both of thought and its expression, writing has 
generally been commended. It is unnecessary, therefore, to dwell 
upon its uses. But to become fully and certainly profitable, it is 
astricted to conditions. — 1°. The writing should be more or less 
limited, that is, be in answer to questions, more or less articulate. 
The student should not be left to roam at large ; but be made to 
think precisely and pertinently, by confining him to certain defin- 
ite points. — 2°. The composition should be strictly and intelli- 
gently criticised. — 3°. It should be read, at least written with 
the hope of being read, before a large auditory ; and according 
to its merits, it should obtain immediate approbation, and co-op- 
erate toward ultimate honor. 

5. Teaching; in order to learn. — The older Universities, all 
of them, regarded the exercise of teaching as a necessary con- 
dition of a perfect knowledge ; in recent times, the Universities 
have, with equal unanimity, neglected this. Yet there can be 
no doubt, I think, of the superior wisdom of the more ancient 
practice. For teaching, like " the quality of mercy, is twice 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 701 

"blessed ; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes." At 
present, we, of course, consider teaching, only in the former re- 
lation — only as the instruction of others, is, itself, an instruction 
of ourselves. — We have already seen [Second end, p. 691), that 
no one can rightly teach, who is not fully cognizant of the matter 
to he taught. But on the other hand, the preparation for, and 
the very process of, instruction, react most beneficially on the 
knowledge of the instructor — if the instructor be what (intellec- 
tually and morally) he ought. If so : Teaching constrains him 
to a clear and distinct consciousness of his subject, in its several 
bearings, internal and external ; it brings to his observation, any 
want or obscurity, lurking in his comprehension of it as a whole; 
and urges him to master any difficulty, the solution of which he 
may have previously adjourned. The necessity of answering the 
interrogations of others compels him, in fact, to interrogate and 
to answer himself. In short, what he had learned synthetically, 
he is now obliged, for the inverse process of instruction, to study 
analytically. But a combination of analysis and synthesis is 
the condition of a perfect knowledge, and as to a perfect knowl- 
edge — 

" Quodque parurn novit, nemo docere potest." 

This, however, as has been said, supposes, that he who prac- 
tices instruction, has the requisite talents and dispositions. If 
its conditions be not performed, what is called (but is not real) 
instruction, is not an improving act, in either relation. It is, at 
best, a mechanical effort ; a mere pouring out of what had been 
previously poured in. And yet, too many, even of our academi- 
cal instructors, are no better. Professing to teach, teaching is 
for them no self-improving process; and as to their pupils — " lis 
simeront de jeunes Perroquets, comme ils ont ete siffle eux- 
memes, lorsqu'ils apprirent a devenir Perroquets." 

Nor must it be supposed, that the older Universities, though 
enjoining, nay, even enforcing, the practice of instruction, as a 
mean of learning, abandoned the higher academical teaching to 
the prelusive efforts of these student-doctors. On this, the mon- 
ostich of Dionysius Cato states their precept and their practice : 
" Disce, sed a doctis ; indoctos ipse doceto." : 

1 I have already (pp. 388, 441. 442) stated, how Universities as the}' arose and 
flourished, during the middle ages, made instruction, by the learner, a necessary ex- 
ercise toward a more perfect learning. Every Bachelor, or incomplete graduate, was 
required, in order to qualify him for the higher degree, to teach certain books or sub- 



702 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

6. Conversation ivith, interrogation of, the learned. — This 
may "be reduced to the head, either of exercise by the taught, or 
of instruction by the teacher. More properly, however, to the 

jects ; and every Master or Doctor was compelled by statute, and frequently on oath, 
to teach (regerc, regere scholas), for a certain period, which was commonly two years, 
immediately subsequent to graduation. During that period of compulsory prelection, 
he was said to be — necessaric regens ; thereafter, if he chose to exercise his right of 
lecturing publicly, or in the University, he was styled — regens ad placitum. Important 
academical privileges were, usually, accorded to the Rcge?its ; and to them was, more 
or less, intrusted the ordinary government of the University. In Oxford and Cam- 
bridge, the distinction of the two Academical Houses (the Congregation and Convo- 
cation of the former, the Regent and Non-Regent Houses of the latter), is founded 
upon the distinction of regent and non-regent ; the signification of these terms had, 
however, for at least a century and a half, been, in these venerable schools, confess 
edly forgotten. (P. 442.) But in the English Universities, though, by statute, en- 
titled publicly to teach, and though still there actually a member of the legislative 
and ruling body ; the graduate would, if he now attempted to exert it, be probably 
denied his right of lecturing in " the Schools." — In the Universities of Germany, on 
the contrary, though the graduate has there lost his ancient power of academical 
government, he still retains his privilege of academical teaching ; for it is only requi- 
site that he should farther write, and formally defend, what is called a " Dissertatio 
ad locum,'' to enable him to lecture in the University, on any subject within the 
compass of his faculty, and to have his course or courses announced in the public 
" Series Praelectionum." The opportunity thus afforded to all graduates of publicly 
manifesting their learning and their ability, as teachers, is, with the admirable sys- 
tem of academical patronage, a main cause of the uniform excellence of the German 
Protestant Universities, as organs of information. — In other Universities, though the 
degree of Doctor or Master be, now as of old, the express conferring of a right aca- 
demically to teach, this right is, however, de facto, now universally of no avail. 

During the middle ages then, this exercise was justly regarded as of the highest 
importance. The Pseudo-Boethius (De Disciplina Scholarum, c. 5 — probably Thomas 
Cantipratensis, who, in the first half of the thirteenth century, gives a curious de- 
lineation of the academical usages of his time), speaks of this exercise as follows : — 
''Tertio, quosdam habeat [studiosus adolescens,] queis secreta doceat librosque legat, 
aliisque rudimentis informet; ut sic, intellecta sciat, scitaque exprimere discat, et 
expressione frequenti usum comparet. Usus magisterium propinat ; alios namque 
docere, est propria facultati indulgere." An account is then given of the modes by 
which an audience was secured. This one scholastic testimony must stand for all ; 
since there is no limit to the mediaeval authorities in commendation of the exercise. 
The following, however, are a few, which recur to me, of the many metrical forms, 
under which the precept became academically current : 

" Condita tabescit, vulgata seientia crescit." 
"Discere si quaeris doceas ; sic ipse doceris: 

Nam studio tali tibi proficis atque sodali." 
" Multa rogare ; rogata tenere ; retenta docere : 

Haec tria discipulum faciunt superare magistrum." 
" Disce, doceque alios, sic tute doceberis ipse ; 
Atque tuse solito certior artis eris." 

In fine : 

" Qui docet, is discit ; qui perdiscit, docet ille : 
Doctus ut evadas, suadeo— Disce, Doce." 

" Docendo discismus'" has even subsided into an adage, not in Latin only. The 
Italian — " Insegnando s' irnpara," is an example. 

From a remote antiquity, however, all philosophic thinkers concurred in the same 
truth. "To teach," says Plato, "is the way in which we learn most and best." 
And while Plato may represent the Greeks, Seneca, enouncing — " Homines dum 
docent discunt," declares what he himself repeats, and what is frequently confirmed 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 703 

former. For it supposes, both an extra activity of the student 
in a questioning of his instructor, and likewise an extra informa- 
tion thereby drawn forth from the instructor, either in the shape 
of the special solution of an individual's difficulties, or of the spe- 
cial direction for an individual's pursuits. Nothing can be more 
useful in a course of study, than this privilege of interrogating 
those who are able to afford us satisfaction. Every one who, by 
his unaided efforts, has succeeded in conquering any department 
of knowledge out of the ordinary routine, knows, that he was 
arrested, often long, by difficulties which could at once have been 
removed by a master of the subject, either solving them himself, 
or directing to where their solution might be found. He knows, 
in short, that half his labor might have been profitably spared. 
" The questioning of the wise," says the Arabian adage, " is the 
half of wisdom ;" and as the German proverb expresses it — "Mit 
fragen wird mann weiss." " Multa rogare," &c, has been al- 
ready quoted as an academical brocard. — (P. 702.) Accordingly, 
it has been the aim of every competent University, to supply the 
alumnus with such assistance. Hence the Conversatoria of the 
Grerman schools ; and in Oxford, when the education was still 
common, public, and legal, we have the following retained among 
the Caroline Statutes : — " Moreover, at the end of Lecture, the 
several Professors shall tarry for a time in the Schools : and if 
any scholar or hearer wish to argue against what they have 
advanced in lecturing, or may otherwise have any doubt, they 
shall listen to him with kindness, and satisfy the difficulties and 
questions proposed to them." — (T. iv. ? S. ii., k 4.) 

7. Social Study.— We are social animals. " Man is the sweet- 
est thing to man ;" he is happier in company ; and in company 
his memory and understanding are more alert. He, therefore, 
often studies better, when he does not study alone. It is an ap- 
ophthegm of Hebrew wisdom : — " Obtain for thyself a preceptor 
from whom thou may'st learn, and a companion with whom thou 

by the other philosophers of Rome. — Again, Clement of Alexandria may stand a 
guarantee for the Christian fathers : — " The teacher adds to his learning, and is fre- 
quently a fellow disciple with those whom he instructs." — Finally, since the revival 
of letters the same unanimity of opinion is manifest. For passing over the exagger- 
ation of those who, like Ringelberg, would elevate this exercise into a one exclusive 
mean of education, all authority acquiesces in the more temperate conclusion of 
Vives : — " Idcirco, nihil est ad magnam eruditionem perindc conducens, ut docere," 
And to terminate with the testimony of a learned Oxford prrelector, logician, and 
divine; Bishop Sanderson used to say: — "I have learned much from my master, 
more from my equals, but most of all from my disciples." 



704 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

may'st study." It is, in fact, as conforming to this requisite qf 
our human nature, that those Universities which compel their 
alumni to live in common, can best vindicate the utility of aca- 
demical Houses ; for, in the community of a college life, the social 
conditions of study are most fully and certainly supplied. In a 
college, especially in a college not too small, each pupil may select 
a companionship of study, conformed to his wants, in numbers, 
age, ability and pursuit — a society, of which the members are 
able to assist and encourage each other, by a community of labor, 
and by a sympathy or fellowship in feeling — " avfjufyikoaofyeiv, 
crv/x(f)t\oXoyelv, koX GvvevQovaia'Qzw" Even Homer, after noticing 
the suggestive influence of man on man, observes, " That the lone 
thinker's thoughts come slight and slow." To him, indeed, we 
trace the origin of the Greek and Latin adage — " Unus homo, 
nullus homo ;" — a truth, which propagated by Plato, Aristotle, 
and subsequent philosophers, had of old subsided into a common 
maxim of academical education. 

Sixth end. — A University is farther bound to grant Degrees to 
those of its alumni who have accomplished their academical 
course, testifying to a certain proficiency in their studies : and 
to this end, it is also bound to have them tried, by competent, 
impartial, and conscientious Examiners. If, moreover, the can- 
didates be placed — 1°, in certain classes, according to their amount 
of learning ; or 2°, arranged according to their superiority, in 
reference to each other ; or 3°, what is best, both these schemes 
of classification be combined : — in this case, a high or low rank 
in the classification will be regarded as an honor or a disgrace, 
and the Examination, especially if compulsory, and the candi- 
dates numerous, becomes a powerful, though not the one suffi- 
cient, mean of stimulating the activity of the student. 

Seventh end. — But besides the more arduous studies, which 
prepare for others, and more powerfully exercise the mind ; and 
besides the Instructors and Examiners competent to promote 
thinking, and to pitch high the standard of intellectual attain- 
ment : there is to be considered another class of sciences, with 
their teachers — the Physical, to wit. These sciences — easy and 
attractive in themselves, and, as commonly cultivated to some 
extent at least, it is even disgraceful not in some degree to know 
•—require for their profitable study, in private, the public exhibi- 
tion of costly experiments, apparatus, and collected objects. This 
exhibition a University ought to supply ; and, at the same time, 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 705 

as a necessary concomitant, a competent monstrator. As amus- 
ing, popular, and facile in themselves, these sciences need no 
external stimulus ; and as not the conditions of progress, either 
objective or subjective, it would be even an inversion of the prime 
purpose of a University, in its general faculty, to apply it. In 
these, all that a University can safely require, is a certain amount 
of proficiency. Its honors, at least its higher honors, should be 
reserved as an encouragement to the more invigorating and fun- 
damental studies ; but which, as less popular, and for a time more 
irksome, are, if not externally — if not peculiarly promoted, sure 
to be neglected. At the same time, there is always a consider- 
able number, a majority even of its alumni, incapable of progress, 
in the higher departments, but whom it is not right in a Univer- 
sity, as alma mater, altogether to neglect. To these, who would 
otherwise be left to idleness and its consequences, the physical 
sciences present an attractive and not an unimproving object of 
occupation. As Augustin says :— " Patiantur Aquilse dum pas- 
cuntur Columbse." The doves, however, should not be tended to 
the neglect of the eagles. To discover, and to recall to unity> 
in Physics as in Mathematics, require inventive ingenuity and 
general ability ; — though Bacon certainly asserts, in commenda- 
tion of his method of discovery, that it actually " levels the aris- 
tocracy of genius." But, in either, merely'to learn what has been 
already detected and detailed, calls out, in the student, the very 
feeblest effort of thought. Consequently, these studies tend the 
least to develop the understanding : and even leave it, for aught 
that they thus effect, in a state of comparative weakness and 
barbarism. (See pp. 46-47, 267-312, 318 sq., 609 sq., 669 sq.) 
But as the many, not incognizant of this, have no conception 
even, of a higher cultivation, the Universities, if conformed to 
popular views, would be abased to the very lowest : 
" Fallitur et fallit, vulgi qui pendet ab ore." l 



1 There is a sort of knowledge, both interesting in itself, and deserving even to be 
academically enforced, which ought to be derived from books alone ; being peculiar!/ 
inappropriate for professorial instruction, indeed for any academical discipline. I mean 
every collection of results, which students, and even professors, take, and must take, 
only on report ; for these results, are mere facts, to be passively believed, satisfying 
our curiosity at no expense of thought, and hardly even cultivating the memory. Yet 
such departments of knowledge, modern wisdom has, in some Universities, established, 
even as imperative courses. One sufficing example may be taken from Ethnology ; 
which, from the relation of languages, supplies us with information, anterior to all his- 
toric record, touching the migration of nations, and with the only certain basis, on 
which to divide and subdivide mankind, according to the affinity of race. This doc 

Y Y 



706 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

Eighth end. — But an University, besides its exhibitions far the 
sciences of nature, ought, moreover, to supply its alumni with a 
complement of books, selected in accommodation to their studies 
and reasonable wants, which are by no means unlimited, and with 
every convenience, which is easily afforded, for consultation and 
reading ; even though it do not accord to them the privilege of 
taking the works out, and, for a time, may deny them access to 
its more extensive libraries. 

Ninth end. — A University should likewise possess a competent 
board of regulation and academical patronage. But the condi- 
tions of the competency of such a board are — 1°, that it should 
be responsible, and fully conscious of its responsibility (therefore, 
properly nominated, small, not transitory, not absolute, and 
sworn) ; 2°, intelligent and well informed ; and 3°, as far as pos- 

trine, most curious and important in itself, is, as a result to he taken upon trust, so limit- 
ed, that it may be comprised in a brief book — in fact, in a single table ; whereas, if 
intelligently known, that is in its grounds, it supposes an acquaintance with some ten, 
twenty, fifty — in truth, with above a hundred languages and dialects. Now, to insti- 
tute a chair, for a professor to retail his second-hand opinions, is sufficiently foolish ; 
but the lectures would be equally inept for academical education, were the professor, 
instead of speaking on the authority of others, himself a Mezzofanti and a Grimm, in 
one ; — himself cognizant of all the relations of all the languages on which he founds : 
for the pupils would still be only passive recipients of another's dicta, and their com- 
parative philology, at least, would, at best, be the philology of parrots. 

"Dico ego, tu dicis, turn denique dicit et ille : 

Dicta sed Iwoc toties, nil nisi dicta docent." 

Ethnology is thus misplaced, in being made a subject of academical discipline. 
Objectively, an important knowledge, it remains, subjectively, an unimproving mecha- 
nism. How different in its effect is another philology ! For nothing can better exer- 
cise the mind, than a rational study, either of the grammar of a known language, or 
of universal grammar, illustrated by the languages with which a student is acquainted. 
Here every doctrine of the teacher may be elaborated by the taught. Yet this most 
valuable science (an applied Logic and Psychology), and most profitable exercise of 
mind, is wholly neglected in our Universities ; though, as I have said before, and I 
speak not without experience, to compass Sanctiu3 and his commentators is a far more 
improving effort than to master the Principia of Newton. 

In this point of view, even History is not a proper subject of academical discipline, 
at least modern history, more especially in the vernacular, and apart from the active 
examination and pondering of authorities. For though of great importance in itself, 
mere historical reading does not necessarily call forth, exercise, and develop the higher 
powers of thought. Moreover, the field of history is too extensive ; and where, in a 
University, it is at all adequately taught, there is hardly a limit to the historical courses. 
In the German Universities (and in their circumstances, I do not say improperly), his- 
tory is made an especial object of instruction ; and, counting, I found that in a single 
University, for a single semester, the historical courses announced in the " Verzeiahr 
niss" amounted, in all the faculties, to eighteen. In fact, if a mere academical course 
of historical lectures be compulsory, and not better than the best book upon the subject, 
it is not merely superfluous — it is a nuisance. It is most proper, however, in a Uni- 
versity to require for its Degree in Arts, a competent amount of historical reading, 
though it do not accord to such knowledge its higher honors ; and it should likewise 
designate the most fitting books for its examination, to the attention of the student 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 707 

sible, with every motive for, and no motive against, the perform- 
ance of its duties. But on the problem — how to obtain such a 
board ? I have already treated in detail. (See pp. 345-382). 

Tenth end.- — As a condition of the second, third, and ninth 
ends, it is requisite, that a University should be able to offer some 
not inadequate reward for the ability and learning required in its 
instructors. Ability and learning should hold their value in the 
academy as in the world ; for as Tacitus expresses it — " Sublatis 
studiorum pretiis, studia ipsa peritura." 

It is not necessary, it is not, indeed, expedient, that the emolu- 
ment of an academic place should be uniform, by whomsoever 
filled. For thus, one individual would obtain comparatively more, 
another comparatively less, than he deserves — Thersites, in a 
division of the booty, would share equally with Achilles. Each 
instructor should, therefore, as far as possible, receive only what 
he equitably merits, and what he is relatively worth, his emolu- 
ments, of course, rising with his reputation, and as he may ap- 
prove himself of greater value to the institution ; for the evils 
are not less from raising mediocrity than from depressing excel- 
lence. This is the principle fairly and fully acted on in the Gf-er- 
man Universities. Heyne, the illustrious veteran, drew ten times 
the salary of Heyne, the promising junior, Professor ; and, though 
in these there be not any academical monopoly, no one is ap- 
pointed to the difficult and important office of public instructor 
who has not publicly manifested his competence to instruct. In 
this island all is the reverse. We pamper ignorance, and starve 
learning. An income permanent, and nearly determinate, is con- 
nected with each academical place ; to this place, comparative 
merit with no certainty regulates the appointment ; and the most 
lucrative places are in general, those opened to the commonest 
qualifications. With us, Thersites obtains a far larger share of 
the booty than Achilles. 

The English Universities are called the Wealthiest in Europe ; 
and so they are — but not as educational establishments. No 
other Universities possess such mighty means ; but in none are 
the means so unprofitably expended — expended, in fact, seldom in 
favor of learning and education, but frequently, nay generally, 
in counteraction. Of this deficiency Lord Bacon was well aware. 
For though, in his time, the University still educated, its chairs, 
or public readerships, were most inadequately remunerated ; so 
that the world and the professions abstracted, then as now, the 



708 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

talent which found no appropriate recompense in either " seat of 
learning." Bacon has thrice solemnly addressed the Crown, and 
the Nation, on this want ; — in The Advancement of Learning, 
in the De Aug-mentis Scienliamm, and in the Advice about the 
Charterhouse. These testimonies are substantially the same ; 
and in the following extract (besides emending the quotations), I 
have inserted from the second and third, what is not contained in 
the first, and somewhat condensed the whole. 

" And because founders of Colleges do plant, and founders of Lectures 
do water, it followeth well in order, to speak of the defect which is in 
public Lectures. Namely, in the smallncss and meanness of the salary 
which in most places (especially among its), is assigned unto them, 
whether they be lectures of [the liberal] Arts, or of Professions. It hath 
been my ancient opinion and observation, that in the Universities of this 
realm, which I take to be of the best endowed Universities of Europe, 
there is nothing more wanting toward the flourishing state of learning, 
than the honorable and plentiful salaries of such readers. For it is neces- 
sary to the progression of sciences that Readers be chosen of the most able 
and sufficient men : as those which are ordained for the generating, and 
propagating forever, of sciences, and not for transitory use. This can not 
be, except their condition and endowment be such as may content the 
ablest man to appropriate his whole labor, and continue his whole age in 
that function ; and therefore must have a proportion answerable to that 
competency of advancement, which may be expected from the practice of 
a profession. So as, if you will have sciences flourish, you must observe 
David's military law, which was — ' That those which tarried with the 
baggage should have equal part with those which went down into the 
battle,' else will the baggage be ill attended. So, Readers in sciences 
are, indeed, the guardians of the stores and provisions of science, whence 
men in active courses are furnished, and therefore ought to have equal 
entertainment with them. For surely, Readers in the chair are as parents 
in the sciences, and deserve to enjoy a condition not inferior to their chil- 
dren that embrace the practical part ; else no man will sit longer in the 
chair than till he can walk to a better preferment : and if the fathers in 
sciences be of the weakest sort, or, through the meanness of their entertain- 
ment, be but men of superficial learning, it will come to pass as Virgil 
saith — 

' Invalidique patrum referent jejunia gnati.' " 

("Works, by Montagu, ii. 94 ; viii. 80 ; v. 380). 
Eleventh end. — 

" Qua; sedes erit Emeritis 1 qua; rura dabuntur 
Qua: noster Veteranus aretl" 

It is evident, and therefore requires no argument, that, no less to 
secure the instruction and example of distinguished teachers (the 
second and third ends), than in justice to these teachers them- 
selves ; the academical Emeritus should be enabled to retire, 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 709 

when no longer competent to discharge his function, either ade- 
quately to the advantage of others, or suitably to his own strength. 
Twelfth end, and last. — A University should, if possible, afford 
to its alumni the means of living academically together ; for thus 
can the possibility of social study most effectually be realized. 
(See p. 703.) But this can seldom be, even partially, attempted; 
and indeed, if certain conditions (besides the mere adequacy of 
accommodation to demand) be not fulfilled, the evil of such an 
arrangement may greatly outweigh the good. These conditions, 
to speak only of the more essential, are three. — In the first place, 
the enforcement of this regulation should not operate as an exclu- 
sion, or even as a tax. The students should be enabled to live as 
cheaply (and this without degradation), in the privileged Houses 
of a University, as they otherwise could in private lodgings ; and 
this supposes that the rates in all these Houses should be equita- 
bly regulated, and certain of them, at least, accommodated to the 
means of the poorer alumni. — In the second place, if the Univer- 
sity be not limited to a single religious sect, those dissenting from 
it should be able to select a House, in which their attendance on 
domestic worship shall not be felt as a violation of their religious 
principles. — In the third place, an effectual superintendence 
should be maintained in the several Houses ; every member 
should be himself constrained to propriety of conduct, and se- 
cured against any disturbance of his studious tranquillity by 
others. If this be not accomplished, Colleges and Halls become, 
in fact, academical nuisances — they are not aids but impediments 
of study. — This concludes our second head of consideration. 

iii.) Comparison of the Means, now at work, especially in 
Oxford, and the Ends there actually effected, with the Ends 
which a University, as a school of liberal study, ought to accom- 
plish- 

In reference to the first end (p. 691) — that a University, in its 
fundamental faculty, and as the organ of a liberal education, 
should make a selection of the studies, not only good in them- 
selves, but useful as the prerequisite of others ; — this primary 
condition Oxford in part fulfills, in part does not now attempt. 

In the first place, as to the objects of the liberal and prepara- 
tory study afforded by this University, there is, I think, not one 
undeserving of preference, not one which ought to be omitted. 
But, 



7J0 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

In the second place, in these, though there be nothing to take 
away, there is not a little to restore ; for the Oxford curriculum 
now abandons both Philosophy itself and the philosophical treat- 
ment of what it professes to teach — an abandonment in which it 
is opposed to its own ancient and still statutory constitution, to 
the actual practice of all other Universities (Cambridge alone ex- 
cepted), and to the opinion of every authority in education of the 
least account. Nor, indeed, can the present practice of the old 
English Universities, in this respect, afford the smallest counte- 
nance to the omission ; for Philosophy and philosophical teaching 
were in them necessarily surrendered, when the education supplied 
by the University was transferred to those who, as a body, were 
wholly inadequate to Philosophy and philosophical teaching. Is 
this denied ? The denial is refuted by the history of the usurpa- 
tion ; nor has the proof ever been attempted, either in Oxford or 
in Cambridge, either publicly or privately, that the abandon- 
ment was made for any better reason, than that the sphere of 
instruction behooved to be conformed to the average capacity of 
the collegial interest, which has latterly administered the whole 
necessary education of the Universities. Such a proof was im- 
possible ; and if possible, would have been suicidal — as philoso- 
phical. Aristotle, in his Exhortative, observes : — "If to philoso- 
phize be right, we must philosophize to realize the right ; if to 
philosophize be wrong, we must philosophize to manifest the 
wrong ; on any alternative, therefore, philosophize toe must." (El 
fiev <f)t\ocro<f)7]T€ov, cf)iXocro(f)rjTeov' teal el /i?) <f>iXocro<p/JLTeov, (pi\ocro(f)/ji- 
riov irdvrwi apa ^Ckocro^Teov.) 1 " Philosophy is to be studied," 
says Clement of Alexandria, " were it even, that it may be scien- 
tifically despised ;" and Averroes asserts, that " it belongs to the 
philosopher alone, to contemn philosophy." — Accordingly, no dem- 
onstration of the kind has, in the English Universities, ever been 
essayed ; such, indeed, was never dreamt of; and the science of 
philosophy proper dropt naturally from the cycle of academical 



1 The author of Hudibras (in his Reflections upon Reason) curiously coincides with 
the Stagirite in this : — " There is nothing that can pretend to judge of Reason [Phil- 
osophy] but itself: and, therefore, they who suppose that they can say aught against 
it, are forced (like jewelers, who beat true diamonds to powder to cut and polish false 
ones), to make use of it against itself. But in this they cheat themselves as well as 
Others. For if what they say against Reason, be without Reason, they deserve to be 
neglected ; and if with Reason, they disprove themselves. For they use it while they 
disclaim it ; and with as much contradiction, as if a man should tell me that he can 
not speak." 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 711 

teaching, when found beyond the general competence of the aca- 
demical teacher. 

Yet is Philosophy (the science of science — the theory of what 
we can know and think and do, in a word — the knowledge of 
ourselves), the object of liberal education, at once of paramount 
importance in itself, and the requisite condition of every other 
liberal science. If men are really to know aught else, the human 
faculties, by which alone this knowledge may be realized, must 
be studied for themselves, in their extent and in their limitations. 
To know — we must understand our instrument of knowing. 
"Know thyself" is, in fact, a heavenly precept, in Christianity 
as in heathenism. And this knowledge can be compassed only 
by reflection — only from within: "Ne te qusesieris extra." It 
tells us, at once, of our weakness and our worth ; it is the disci- 
pline both of humility and of hope. (See p. 585-592). On the 
other hand, a knowledge, drawn too exclusively from without, is 
not only imperfect in itself, but makes its votaries fatalists, mate- 
rialists, pantheists— if they dare to think ; it is the dogmatism 
of despair. (See p. 297-302.) " Laudabilior," says Augustin — 
" laudabilior est animus, cui nota est infirmitas propria, quam 
qui, ea non respecta, mcenia mundi, vias siderum, fundamenta 
terrarum et fastigia coslorum, etiam cogniturus, scrutatur." 1 We 
can know God only as we know ourselves. " Noverim me, 
noverim Te," in St. Austin's prayer ; St. Bernard :— " Principals, 
ad videndum Deum, est animus rationalis intuens seipsum ;" 

1 This might stand a motto for the doctrine of the Conditioned. It is from the 
proem to the fourth book De Trinitate. The scheme of pantheistic omniscience, so 
prevalent among the sequacious thinkers of the day, 

(" Raging from Reason, and on phantasms fed,") 
would have found little favor with the religious and- philosophic nescience of St. Austin, 
Evolved from " the Nothing," " the All" of this theory, at the first exorcism of a rigor- 
ous interrogation, relapses into nothing ; 

"Et redit in nihilumquod fuit ante nihil." 
Strauss, the Hegelian theologian, sees in Christianity only a nil/thus. Naturally : for 
his Hegelian " Idea," itself a myth, and confessedly finding itself in every thing, of 
course, finds in any thing a myth; " Chirnssra chimaeram parit." — I have never, in 
fact, met with a Hegelian (and I have known several of distinguished talents, both 
German and British), who could answer three questions, without being driven to the 
confession, that they did not, as yet, fully comprehend the doctrine of their master, 
though believing it to be all true. Expectants — in fact "Papists in philosophy!" — 
Hegel himself, not long before his death, made the following declaration : — " I am 
downcast about my Philosophy. For, of all my disciples, one only understands it ; 
and he does not." (Blatter f. liter. Unterhall. No. 351. Dec. 18oi ; et alibi.') The 
one disciple. I presume, was Gabler; but did Hegel understand himself! I am told, 
that Hegelianisrn is making way at Oxford. This may be good or it may be bad : the 
doctrine is good to controvert ; it is bad to believe. 



712 APFENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

and even Averroes : — "Nosce teipsum, et cognosces creatorem 
tun in." 

Nor is the omission of philosophy from an academical curri- 
culum equivalent to an arrest on the philosophizing activity of 
the student. This stupor, however deplorable in itself, might 
still be a minor evil ; for it is better, assuredly, to be without 
opinions, than to have them, not only speculatively untrue, but 
practically corruptive. Yet, even this paralysis, I say, is not 
accomplished. Right or wrong, a man must philosophize, for he 
philosophizes as he thinks ; and the only effect, in the present 
day especially, of a University denying to its alumni the invigo- 
rating exercise of a right philosophy, in their abandonment, not 
only without precaution, but even prepared by debilitation, to 
the pernicious influence of a wrong ; — " Sine vindice prseda." 
And in what country has a philosophy ever gravitating, as theo- 
retical toward materialism, as practical toward fatalism, been 
most peculiar and pervasive ? 

Again — Philosophy, the thinking of thought, the recoil of 
mind upon itself, is the most improving of mental exercises, con- 
ducing, above all others, to evolve the highest and rarest of the 
intellectual powers. By this, the mind is not only trained to 
philosophy proper, but prepared, in general, for powerful, easy,, 
and successful energy, in whatever department of knowledge it 
may more peculiarly apply itself. 1 But the want of this superior 
discipline is but too apparent in English literature, and especially 
in those very fields of erudition by preference cultivated in En- 
gland. 

For example, and be it here spoken in all praise : no study has 
been more anxiously encouraged, and more sedulously pursued 
in England, than Classical Literature ; and among English 
scholars, two at least may, for natural talent, of a certain kind 
at least, be ranked among the most distinguished philologers of 
Europe. Yet, of English scholars as a class, both now and for 
generations past, the observation of Godfrey Hermann holds good : 

1 Kant and Ruhnkenius were early friends and fellow-collegians at Koenigsberg ; but 
the genius of each seemed then (as we learn from Wyttenbach) strongly to incline 
toward the studies in which the other afterward reigned paramount. And truly, the 
best progymuastic of philosophy is the theory of language ; and how necessary is 
philosophy and the practice of speculation to any progress of account in the higher 
philology, Pvuhnken has himself authoritatively declared in his " Elogium Hemster- 
husii." Wy/.tenbach, Ruhnken's successor, great as a critical scholar, was hardly in- 
ferior as a philosophical critic. See, besides his own works, passim, his Life by Mahne. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 713 

— " They read but do not think ; they would be philologers, and 
have not learnt to philosophize." 1 The philosophy of a philology 
is shown primarily in its grammars, and its grammars for the use 
of schools. But in this respect. England remained, till lately, 
nearly two centuries behind the rest of Christendom. Tf there 
were any principle in her psedagogical practice, " Gaudent sudo- 
ribus artes," must have been the rule ; and applied it was with 
a vengeance. The English schoolboy was treated like the Rus- 
sian pack-horse; the load in one pannier was balanced by a coun- 
ter weight of stones in the other. Educationally, England for 
generations crept by the heavy waggon while other countries were 
flying by the rail. His Majesty George III. sent a collection of 
the English classical school books to Heyne ; and, among others, 
the Eton and Westminster grammars, Greek and Latin, astonish- 
ed, as well they might, the great scholar and educationist. All 
the philological monstrosities, perversions, confusions, which in 
the manuals of other countries had been long thrown out, stood 
in these embalmed. The unhappy tyro was initiated in Latin, 
through a Latin book ; while the ten declensions, the thirteen 
conjugations, which had been reduced to three and two by Weller 
and Lancelot, still continued, among a mass of other abominations, 
to complicate, in this country alone, the elementary instruction 
of Greek. Half a century, even after the judgment of Heyne, 
the old routine continued. But all has now been changed — ex- 
cept the cause : for the same inertion of original and independent 
thought is equally apparent. As formerly, from want of think- 
ing, the old sufficed ; so now, from want of thinking, the new is 
borrowed. In fact, openly or occultly, honorably or dishonorably, 
the far greater part of the higher and lower philology published 
in this country is an importation — especially from Germany : but 
so passive is the ignorance of our compilers, that they are often 
(though affecting, of course, opinions), unaware even of what is 
best worthy of plagiarism or transplantation. 

1 The author of " Philosophical Arrangements" and of " Hermes" may be perhaps 
objected. " Exceptio probat regulam." Mr. Harris had long left the University of 
Oxford, " where" (in the words of his son Lord Malmesbury), "he had passed the 
usual number of years as a gentleman commoner of Wadham College," before he began 
even to read Aristotle or to inquire into the Greek philosophy ; and he was led to the 
consideration of universal grammar by no book of the academical cycle, either then or 
since, but by the " Minerva" of Sanctius. That Mr. Harris was a tardy student of 
philosophy, is shown, perhaps, in his want of self-reliance, in his prejudice in favor of 
authority — at least of ancient authority. But truth is not the property of the old or 
of the new ; " nondum occupata," it frequently belongs to neither. 



<14 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

Theology — Christian theology is, as a human science, a philo- 
logy and history applied by philosophy ; and the comparatively 
ineffectual character of our British theology has, for generations, 
in the case of England, mainly resulted from the deficiency of 
its philosophical element. The want of a philosophical training 
in the Anglican clergy, to he regretted at all times, may soon, 
indeed, become lamentably apparent, were they called on to resist 
an invasion, now so likely, of certain foreign philosophico-theo- 
logical opinions. In fact, this is the invasion, and this the 
want of national preparation, for which, even at the present 
juncture, I should be most alarmed. On the Universities, 
which have illegally dropped philosophy and its training from 
their course of discipline, will lie the responsibility of this sin- 
gular and dangerous disarmature ; shared, indeed, with the 
Church and State, which have both passively and permissively 
looked on. 

In reference to the second end. (P. 691.) — A University, if it 
accomplish the purpose of its institution, is bound to supply com- 
petent and to exclude incompetent instructors. But this end, is 
it fulfilled by the agencies now dominant in Oxford ? 

To answer this question, we have only to look at the preceding 
Table (p. 672), for there we have exhibited in contrast, not differ- 
ent Universities pursuing different studies, but the same Univer- 
sity distributing its instruction among many private Houses : 
each House pursuing the same studies, but by different instruct- 
ors ; and at last, the comparative success of the several domestic 
instructions, after a four years' continuance fairly tested and 
formally proclaimed by the University, through its public board 
of Examination. But that Table, while it does not show that 
instruction, even as afforded in the very highest Colleges, is of a 
degree and quality such as it might and should be ; clearly shows, 
however, that the instruction afforded in the lower Houses is such, 
as is discreditable for the University, the Church, the State, to 
have been ever tolerated ; were that instruction, even verbally, 
conformable to statute, and not, as it is, diametrically opposed 
both to the spirit and to the letter of academical law. 

Rejecting then the Halls, comparing, on this standard, only 
the Colleges, and judging not by years but by decades, we see 
that instruction in one College is less efficient than that in ano- 
ther ; and this to a degree, not lurking under any fractional dif- 
ference, but obtruded on observation by an integral sinking of 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 715 

college belovj college to nearly twenty depths. 1 Nay, on the same 
standard, we find a similar declension manifested between the 
educations afforded by the same college, during one decade and 
during another. (P. 680, sq.) 

The Table likewise shows, that if the two departments which 
the University professes, and which the Colleges and Tutors are, 
de facto, exclusively authorized, to teach, the whole collegial 
Tutors (49) have only, of their body, in L. H., about a half (26), 
in D. M., about a sixth (8), of the First Class. Consequently, 
if there be any connection between superior knowledge and su- 
perior tuition, Oxford now abandons, indifferently, the work of 
education to competent and incompetent hands ; and the mighty 
differences of result could not, therefore, but occur, unless com- 
petence and incompetence were throughout the Houses equally 
distributed — which they fortunately are not. 

Such are the facts, unparalleled out of the old English Uni- 
versities, and evinced by the statistics of the Oxford Examination 
itself. And, however astonishing, with a knowledge of the cir- 



1 I see in the late discussions concerning medical practice and medical statistics, 
that less than an eightieth part of the difference in success, which thus discriminates 
Coliege from College, would prove far more than decisive of the comparative truth 
and falsehood of rival medical theories. It is admitted on all hands, that if Homoeo- 
pathy cure, even under one in four, more than Allopathy, it must at once triumph- 
antly supersede its opponent. The whole question regards the reality of the difference ; 
which here may, there can not, be disputed. But imagine ! — A series of eighty Hos- 
pitals, each confessedly losing, on the average, a fourth of the patients more than its 
antecedent ; and all fiercely defended. Defended by enstasis : — as realizing, together, 
a single system of cure, and that the one best possible ! Defended by antiparastasis : 
— as, at any rate, the Hospitals have a vested right to cure or kill ; and [though, in 
fact, their monopoly of treatment had originally been usurped through breach of 
trust,] that it would be the climax of injustice to deprive them and their governors 
of the profitable privilege to physic the lieges as they chose ! Yet what is this but 
the Oxford educational system and its defense ; substituting only minds for bodies, 
Houses for Hospitals, and a decrement by integers instead of a decrement by frac- 
tions 1 — In one respect, indeed, this is soothing. It shows, however unsatisfactory 
be the present state of Medicine, that its theories, the most conflictive, vary by a 
difference less, a hundred times, than the same practice of the same theory of Educa- 
tion varies even in the same seminary, but in different hands ; that nature, at least, 
is far stronger against the Doctor (whom we can not correct), than against' the School- 
master (whom we can). In fact, Saul slaying his thousands, and David his ten thous- 
ands, is but a type of the inferiority of one Educational seminary — of one Oxford 
College to another. This, assuredly, is not consolatory ; but a correction of the evil 
is within our power. 

The Rev. Mr. Sewell, Tutor of New College, and otherwise an able man, has of late 
gravely proposed — to send out to the great towns of England tutorial missions, from 
the bodies thus so brightly illuminating Oxford ; professedly, in order, that any change 
may be averted from the system of education which has wrought so admirably in that 
University, and, at the same time, to communicate the benefit of such system to the 
lieges at large ! 



716 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

cumstances, all is easy of explanation. Let us only recollect 
two things: In the first place, that instruction, as the most im- 
portant, is the most difficult, of arts ; and in the second, that 
Oxford, in violation of oath and statute, and apparently regarding 
education as a matter either of no importance or of no difficulty, 
now leaves this function to be engrossed, at hazard, by a class 
of men, who, as a class, are wholly unequal to the office — an 
office for which indeed they were never dreamt of even by their 
founders. For : — 1°, the actually authorized education of Oxford 
(to say nothing of Cambridge) is, de facto, monopolized by the 
Collegiate Fellows ; — 2°, the qualifications of an individual for 
Fellow of a College are, usually, quite distinct from his talent, 
learning, or capacity of teaching; — 3°, out of these incompetent 
Fellows, the Tutors, if not self-constituted, are nominated, in 
general, by an incompetent Head ; while 4°, out of the low aver- 
age of these incorporated Heads and Fellows, a few, by the 
favorable circumstances of their foundation and other accidents, 
rise to a variable pitch of educational proficiency. Thus unable 
rightly to teach, even what had been specially proposed, the Ox- 
ford Tutors are of course, in general, still less able to resolve the 
difficulties or to guide the reading of their pupils. Questions, 
all but elementary, must, indeed, naturally cease ; for these 
would be found, commonly, useless by the one party, and not 
convenient by the other. " Percontatorem fugito." Schleier- 
macher truly says, that the distance maintained by an academi- 
cal teacher toward the taught, is usually in the ratio of his in- 
competence. (Gredanken, &c, p. 66.) 

It is thus manifest, and on its own standard, that the academi- 
cal education of Oxford is now conducted by those inadequate to 
the function, even as lowered toward their level. — So much for 
the second end. 

In reference to the third end. (P. 691). This (the proposing to 
the student, more especially in his instructors, patterns of high 
learning and ability) — this end is not only unfulfilled by the 
University of Oxford, it is even frequently reversed. 

Should the student not penetrate below the surface — not find 
what duties have, heretofore, been violated, in suppression of the 
University instruction, by the University guardians ; still, he will 
have painfully obtruded on his view, the example of a flagrant 
disregard of learning in this " chosen seat of learning." Here he 
will see the education of himself and other alumni handed over 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 717 

by the public Alma Mater to the private and fortuitous nursery 
of a College ; and there he may find himself consigned to the 
tuition of an individual, not even of undetermined qualification, 
but who stands perennially pilloried by the University itself, 
marked as of slender acquirements in knowledge, and, therefore, 
as incompetent to teach. He thus makes, by times, the untoward 
discovery, that literary merit is of very minor account, even in 
our most venerable seminaries ; and this, if there be aught in 
him worth the cultivating, ends, in a contempt of the teacher, or 
in a disgust at what is taught, or in a self-satisfied contentment 
with his own humble attainments. The only hope for him is to 
see through the corruption — to place himself above the seminary 
— to rely upon himself. All this is the converse of what a Uni- 
versity ought to strive after. For it should be above its alumni ; 
a school, not of vanity and sloth, but of humility and exertion ; 
and the tyro should there be made to mete himself, not with 
Thersites, certainly, but, if possible, with Achilles. — (See, as pre- 
viously referred to, p. 359, sq.) 

In reference to the fourth end. (P. 692.) — In determining 
strenuous study, through the excitement of honor and emulation, 
this school accomplishes much less than, with its means, might 
easily be done ; although in this respect, and compared with 
many other Universities, Oxford is not undeserving of encomium. 
To this end, the effect of domestic education is small ; that of the 
University Examination, considerable. — Of these in their order. 
It is evident, without descending to the fact, that there can be 
little or no emulation among students, as divided among the 
houses, and subdivided among the Tutors ; for the conditions of 
emulation — numbers, equality, 'publicity — are all awantino-. In 
truth, competition, in such circumstances, instead of honor, re- 
ceives only derision. So much indeed is virtually confessed by 
Bishop Coplestone. 1 " The heaviness of solitary reading is reliev- 
ed by the number which compose a class : this number varies 
from three or four to ten or twelve : a sort of emulation is awak- 
ened in the pupil," &c. In the circumstances of his reply, more 
perhaps could not have been admitted ; and, in point of fact, emu- 



1 A Reply to the Calumnies, &c., p. 146. — I may notice, that what Dr. Coplestone 
in the context, says of tutorial instruction, is rather a statement of its possible virtues 
— which in his own tuition, I hav« no doubt, were realized— than of its actual qualities, 
as manifested by the immense majority of the Tutors. 



71S APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

lation in the collegio-tutorial discipline of Oxford may be practi- 
cally thrown out of account. 

The only excitement of study, through the desire of honor, 
worthy of account in Oxford, is that resulting from the Examina- 
tion for a degree of A.B., and the classifying of candidates there- 
with connected. And this, in so far as it extends, is beneficial ; 
but its influence is limited. In the first place, the influence does 
not operate in full effect throughout the curriculum of academical 
study. It acts weakly and irregularly at first, and only acquires 
continuity and strength as the academical course draws to a con- 
clusion. In the second place, the influence does not operate on 
all. It determines no application in the many who are not to 
graduate. It determines also no application in those, neither few 
nor feeble, who are, or deem themselves, from any cause (as want 
of perseverance, want of nerve, the distraction of favorite pursuits, 
&c.) unable to attain a higher honor, and have no ambition, per- 
haps a positive dread, to be commemorated for a lower. On these 
the classification, if it have any effect, acts only for evil ; as it 
constrains the candidate to limit the books, which he studies and 
gives up, to such a minimum, as may not risk his being honored 
and recorded. It is a great improvement in the new Statute, 
that this positive evil of the present Examination is therein ob- 
viated ; for the names of all who pass are henceforth to be pub- 
lished, be they honored or not. 

In reference to the fifth end. (P. 694.) — This end is the elicit- 
ing in the student the fullest and most unexclusive energy of 
thought : 1°, by presenting to him the most suitable objects of 
study ; and 2°, by teaching these through the most suitable 
exercises. — Of these in detail. 

As to the objects : — The more arduous studies, those which, 
requiring, draw forth the highest and most improving activity of 
mind — Philosophy proper (the thinking of thought, the science 
of what can and can not be known), and a philosophic treatment 
of the sciences in general ; — these, as a matter of necessity, must 
be excluded from an education monopolized by an interest, like 
the collegial of Oxford, constituted, not by ability and acquire- 
ment, and teaching, not for the benefit of the taught, but for the 
profit of the teacher. For an instruction, in objects, methods, 
means, can never possibly transcend the average level of the 
instructors. The honor of the University, and the advantage of 
its alumni, are here, therefore, now subordinated to the capacity 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 719 

of those, who were rarely incorporated for any capacity of aca- 
demical teaching, though usurping exclusively the office ; while 
what is the comparative height and depth of their actual capacity 
for that office, and on an Oxford standard, the Table shows. 
Instead, therefore, of the studies fostered in Oxford being those 
which demand a higher capacity, and elioit any maximum of 
thought, it was requisite to prefer such as could be best reduced 
to an inferior level, to mechanism and routine. And though 
impossible for a University to exclude all philosophical authors 
from the academical cycle ; yet philosophy was taught not as 
food for speculation, but in the dicta of these authors as peremp- 
tory and decisive ; while the student's knowledge was guaged, 
not by his systematic comprehension of a work in its totality, 
parts and relations, but only by the accuracy (and that is not to 
be contemned) with which he might have committed to memory 
the very terms of its definitions, in the very language of it? 
writer. 

As to the exercises ; their existence and utility were of course 
regulated by the capabilities of the exerciser. 

Examination (p. 695) limited to the petty numbers of the pu- 
pils, and by the ability and knowledge of the Tutor, was too fre- 
quently, if it took place at all, a perfunctory, occasional and 
useless form. 

Disputation (p. 696) long obsolete, was, except as a dead for- 
mality, in Oxford totally forgotten. 

Repetition (p. 698) is the exercise which has been most success- 
fully practiced in Oxford ; this, indeed, the examination for a 
degree made necessary. Herein there is every thing to praise ; 
and had the study been needs as intelligent as sedulous, and 
directed as much to understand as to remember, there would 
have been almost nothing left even to desire. 

Written Composition. (P. 700.) Not one of the conditions of 
this exercise are in Oxford collegially fulfilled — except in small 
measure, and by unusual accident. — The student is not compelled 
to think for himself, by being limited to definite parts of a definite 
subject ; but, if the form of a written composition be occasionally 
required, he is left to satisfy the demand by any production, how- 
ever vaguely pertinent, and therefore, perhaps, not even his own. 
— There is no one bound, no one probably inclined, if, indeed, 
any one competent, to criticism. — Finally, there is no numerous 
audience to listen ; and so far from anv stimulus to exertion, a 



720 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

painstaking writer would by his fellows be only derided as a 
painstaking dunce. 

Teaching, in order to learn. (P. 700.) — This is not now in 
Oxford, indeed not now in any of our present Universities, em- 
ployed as an improving exercise in the course of learning. But, 
in Oxford, as the Tutors are generally neither old in years, nor 
few in numbers; therefore, if individually well selected, and their 
tuition such as to necessitate an all-sided instruction of them- 
selves, the tutorial system might justly claim, as a reflex mean 
of erudition, some peculiar advantages. But, alas ! a Tutor's 
appointment and teaching are so much mere matters of routine, 
that little or no profit can accrue to himself from the exercise of 
his function. Instruction has been too long and too generally, 
in Oxford, as elsewhere, the " sifflement des Perroquets ;" nor, 
unless the doctrine of Aristotle in regard to teaching and knowl- 
edge (p. 687) be egregiously wrong, can the modern discipline of 
that University make (as a system) pretension to respect, or even 
toleration ? 

Conversation with, interrogation of, the learned (p. 702), is an 
exercise to be at once discounted ; for no one will hold, that an 
Oxford Fellow-Tutor is now, ex officio, to be presumed, either 
wise himself, or a fountain of wisdom to inquiring pupils. 1 

Social Study (p. 703) is an exercise which, as it can be best 
realized in the community of an academical House, affords an 
advantage more than compensating for certain disadvantages 
which frequently result from such an arrangement. In this 
view, therefore, I think, that the Colleges are, and that the Halls 
might be, profitable institutions ; — but the best as now existing, 
are capable of great improvement. 

In reference to the sixth end (p. 704) — the grant of a Degree 
or authentic certificate of proficiency. To say nothing of their 
personal and professional character, and judging only from the 
mode of their appointment, and the sacred obligation under which 
they must ever consciously act ; I should confidently rely on the 

1 The following note should have been appended to the quotation (p. 703) from the 
Caroline Statutes : — This regulation, as to a questioning of the Professor, is an inhe- 
ritance devolving from the middle ages — the mere repetition of an ancient statute. It 
is found, almost in the same words, as a law, in the Italian and Spanish Universities, 
and throughout the Colleges in every Catholic country belonging to the Society of 
Jesus. In like manner, the German Protestant Universities, in general, secure, by 
public authority, this privilege of interrogating the academical instructor; — I remem- 
ber the fact, in reference to Goettingen, Erlangen, Greifswalde, Marburg, &c. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 721 

moral rectitude of the Oxford Examiners. This, indeed, I have 
never heard called in question, either as regards the Oxford or 
the Cambridge Masters ; and in this fundamental condition of the 
value of a degree and relative classification, these Universities 
stand in honorable contrast to most others. — As to the compe- 
tence of the Examiners, in reference to the objects of examina- 
tion, the same is true. But these objects, like the objects of in- 
struction, I must hold to be inadequate, in as much as they do 
not comprise Philosophy and sundry of the philosophical sciences. 
(See p. 710, sq.) — In another respect, I think that a far more 
definite line should have been drawn between the higher honors, 
which in the neiv Examination Statute are attached to the depart- 
ments necessary for a degree, and the lower, there assigned to 
branches of study left optional to the candidate. For a class of 
honor in any one department is ostensibly the same as a class of 
honor in any other. — Nor can I think, that more might not be 
done to evince the comparative proficiency of individuals. For 
though no one should reach a third, second, or first class, without 
a definite amount of learning ; still the several candidates within 
that class might be easily subordinated by comparative merit, and 
not left to the tumultuary grouping of an alphabetical arrange- 
ment. — But of this again. 

In reference to the seventh end (p. 704,) the public Exhibitions 
necessary for the study of the Physical sciences. On the present 
state of Oxford in this respect I am hardly qualified to speak. 
As to the mode of instruction in these sciences, I shall have 
occasion to say somewhat in the sequel. 

In reference to the eighth end (p. 706,) — the supply of the 
students with a complement of Books suited to their scientific 
wants — Oxford, publicly or privately, has done nothing. The 
libraries of the several colleges are, I believe (like the Bodleian 
and Radcliffe), still closed against the undergraduate; nor in- 
deed have the Houses, in general, such selections of books as 
would be rightly useful to him in the guidance and promotion 
of his studies. 

In reference to the ninth end (p. 706,) — a responsible and com- 
petent board of Regulation and Patronage — Oxford has none. 
The need of it is shown by centuries of illegality and abasement. 

In reference to the tenth end (p. 707,) — the adequate Remuner- 
ation of the University Teachers ; — as University teaching is now 
virtually extinct in Oxford, there can be no question about it3 

Zz 



T22 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

adequate remuneration. Indeed, the conjoined facts — the ancient 
deficiency of this recompense — its independence on the exertion 
of the incumbent, and his consequent tendency to do nothing — 
the vicious modes of nominating professors, the nomination, 
therefore, of incompetent praelectors — the disinclination of the 
new rulers of the University, the heads of Houses, to do ough* 
to raise the public instruction, which they were sworn to im- 
prove — in fine, even their active co-operation toward its actuat 
extinction ; these conjoined facts soon had their natural — their 
necessary result. The public or academical education was nulli- 
fied, if not formally annulled ; the private or domestic silently 
succeeded, to its place ; and the Fellow who rarely obtained his 
appointment in College from literary merit, superseded the Pro- 
fessor, who ought in the University, to have been elected to his 
chair for that alone — but who, at last, had become so contempti- 
ble, that, except when an endowment could be converted into a 
sinecure, was, without reclamation, not even nominally elected 
at all. Most of the public prselectorships or academical chairs, 
thus have, and have long had, an existence only in the Statute- 
book. (See pp. 418-422, 439-442.) 

In reference to the eleventh end (p. 708,) — a Provision for aca- 
demical Emeriti— with this, it is almost needless to say, that 
Oxford is wholly unprovided. 

. In regard to the twelfth and last end (p. 707,) — the accommo- 
dation of the academical members in Academical Houses (Halls 
or Colleges) — Oxford supplies this, but not under all the three 
conditions to their full extent. The first is not adequately ful- 
filled. The second does not at present emerge. The third is 
fairly performed. 

I have, in these previous observations, been compelled — com- 
pelled in the interest of truth — to show, in various respects, that 
the education now afforded in the University of Oxford, is not 
such as it ought to be. But though no attentive reader can sup- 
pose, from my strictures upon this, that I am, by preference, an 
admirer of any other British University : still I think it proper 
explicitly to state — that I regard our British Universities, as 
though in different ways, all lamentably imperfect ; and while 
none, in my opinion, accomplishes what, under right regulation 
it might, I should yet be mortified to have it thought, that I could 
institute a comparison where there is no medium, far less dis- 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 



723 



parage one inadequate instrument to the praise of any other. 
Oxford is here only collated with Oxford ; and for aught that I 
have said, however imperfect may be the education of that Uni- 
versity as tested hy its own standard, I might still, without at 
least self-contradiction, hold that the discipline of Oxford consti- 
tutes, in so far as it goes, the very best academical discipline in 
the British empire. In point of fact, with the present unfortunate 
organizations of professorial appointment, I hardly think that the 
Professors of the British Universities would, as a body, show a 
higher average than the Oxford Tutors, if we had their relative 
capacity meted by a standard like the Oxford Examination. 
They are, pro tanto, in general, unknown quantities. 
I now proceed to the last head of distribution. 

iv.) Suggestion of such Changes as may most easily be made, 
to render the University of Oxford a more efficient instrument 
for the purpose of general and preparatory education. 

As already premised, I do not mean to hazard the suggestion 
of measures which would here realize any ideal of a perfect Uni- 
versity. I propose only easy and manifest remedies for evils 
intolerable even to ordinary reason. It is self-evident, that if 
Fellowships, Headships, &c, were made the just rewards of aca- 
demical merit, these offices, themselves enhanced indefinitely in 
estimation, would constitute an apparatus of powerful agencies, 
which, as they have hitherto impeded, would now be turned to 
promote, the ends of the University ; and Oxford, raised from her' 
present humble and ambiguous condition, would henceforward 
stand proudly forth as the most efficient mean, perhaps, of educa- 
tion in the world. But this, however I may wish, I would not 
venture to propose. 

A University only exists, as it executes the functions of its 
existence ; education is the one sole function for which it was 
created : as an organ of education, the University of Oxford (and 
what is true of Oxford is true of Cambridge) has been long sus- 
pended ; its existence, therefore, is in abeyance. The statutory 
education being suppressed in the public University, a precarious 
education has been attempted in the four-and-twenty private but 
privileged Houses ; while these, unconnected with the University 
and with each other as seminaries of instruction, are merely a 
local aggregation of so many private and irresponsible schools, 
their only academical correlation being, that they all send up 



724 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.J 

their pupils, as candidates for a degree, to be examined by the 
Central board appointed by the University. This public examina- 
tion, as we have seen, shows, of itself, that these twenty-four 
Houses are, in general, most inefficient private schools ; one sink- 
ing below another to such a depth, that the lowest of the twenty- 
four is almost twenty-four times lower than the highest. 

The Houses and their Heads have contrived, however, to 
swamp the University. Have they elevated themselves ? But in 
restoring the public reality of education against the private and 
usurping semblance — in restoring the University against the Col- 
leges ; we ought not to imitate the precedent of the Houses, we 
ought not to swamp them. Our policy ought, in fact, to be direct- 
ly the converse. " To Reform, not to Rescind," should be the 
maxim. Restoring the University, we should not supersede the 
Colleges ; but, on the contrary, enable the best to do far more 
than they can now accomplish, and compel the worst to become 
the rivals of the best. Let our reform be that of Bacon — with- 
out bravery, or scandal, or assentation, either of old or new ; and 
taking counsel of every time, if our changes be rational, let us 
cot be startled should they be compulsory. They ought, how- 
ever, to be gradual; beneficial to the public, but not unjust to 
individuals : announced, long enough before they are carried into 
execution ; and no duty suddenly required of any to which he is 
not bound to be competent. Our procedure should be the same in 
our seminaries of either kind ; in both we should prefer ingraft- 
ing to extirpation — were it only for parsimony of time. For thus, 
as, in our gardens, the idlest stock may by a prudent treatment soon 
rise into a fruitful tree ; so, in our Universities, the least effective 
College may by a judicious introduction of new measures spring 
at once to unexpected usefulness and honor : 

— " Nee longum tempue, et ingens 
Exiit ad cffilum ramis felicibus arbob, 
Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma." 

In the ensuing observations, I shall consider : — a) Things pri- 
mary or constitutive ; b) Things secondary or complemental. 

a) Things primary or constitutive. Under this head the dis- 
cussion divides itself into Jive parts, in as much as it regards :— 
1. . The Objects of instruction ; 2. The Instructors or kind of per- 
sons privileged to teach ; 3. The Instruction and its modes ; 4. 
The 'Excitement to study ; 5. The Degree or certificate of pro- 
ficiency. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 725 

1. The Objects of instruction. (Pp. 691 and 709 sq. ;) 694 
sq. and 718 sq. 

From what has been previously said it is apparent, that, in my 
opinion, there is much good, and not a little deficient, in the ob- 
ject-matter of the Oxford education. 

In the first place, I hold, that the study, there pursued, of phi- 
lology, and in general of classical antiquity, is of the highest 
utility ; both (objectively) as supplying the prerequisites of ulte* 
rior knowledge, and (subjectively) as a discipline of mind. In 
relation to the former, I have above (pp. 326-337), endeavored to 
show, that classical studies are of the utmost importance to the 
liberal professions, more especially to Theology ; and in reference 
to the latter, I would only object that, as too mechanically taught, 
in Oxford, these studies do not become the mean of sufficiently 
awakening the learner to a vigorous self activity. In a word, the 
philological teaching is there not philosophical enough. Even the 
higher grammar, a science most important in itself, and compris- 
ing problems of the most interesting and profitable discussion, is, 
educationally at least, wholly neglected ; the philology, the object 
of tuition in the College, and of examination in the schools, rarely 
rising above an empirical knowledge of the phraseology of this or 
that classical author. 

But in the second place, this omission of philosophical grammar 
from the cycle of University studies, is only part and parcel of 
the omission of philosophy itself along with the more central of 
the philosophical sciences. On this unhappy omission, academi- 
cally unexampled out of England, in violation even of English 
academical statute, and contrary to all opinions — universally the 
most respectable, and specially the most respected in Oxford, I 
have already spoken, and may hereafter have occasion to speakj 
As noticed, Philosophy, in Oxford, as in Cambridge, was only 
left untaught, when the ordinary instructor had become incapa- 
ble of teaching it. The raising of the teacher in these schools is, 
therefore, a prerequisite to the restoration of philosophy. And of 
that anon. 

2. The Instructors, or persons privileged to teach. (Pp. 691 
and 714 sq. ; 692 and 716). 

Speaking only of the fundamental faculty — there are two kinds 
of Instructors to whom Universities confide the performance of 
their essential duty — the business of education. These we may 
call Professors and Tutors ; although the distinction in function 



726 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C). 

may not, especially in former ages, and in foreign countries, cor- 
respond always to the distinction in name. By Professor, I 
mean a teacher, exclusively privileged, to deliver from his own 
resources and at his own discretion, a course of lectures, on a 
certain department of knowledge, to the whole academical alumni. 
By Tutor, I mean a teacher, among others, privileged to see that 
his peculiar pupils (a section of the academical alumni) read and 
understand certain books — certain texts, codes, departments of 
doctrine, authorized by the University. Tutors are now. de facto 
at least, the only necessary instructors in Oxford and Cambridge ; 
Professors alone are known in the other British, as in all foreign, 
Universities. 

Instruction by Tutors, and instruction by Professors, have, 
severally, peculiar advantages ; there are certain conditions which 
each system specially supposes ; and this or that Tutorial, this 
or that Professorial, application will be good or bad, as the condi- 
tions of the special system are or are not fulfilled in it. Com- 
paring these together in themselves, that is, all else being sup- 
posed equal: — 

The peculiar advantage of the Professorial instruction is — that 
requiring a small complement of teachers, these may individually 
all be of a higher learning and ability ; and consequently in so 
far as higher individual learning and ability afford a superior 
instruction, the Professorial system, if properly organized, is pref- 
erable to the Tutorial, even at the best. But in so far as the 
efficiency of an education depends on the greater number of its 
teachers ; or, in so far as the condition of higher learning and 
ability is not adequately supplied, the Professorial system is infe- 
rior to the Tutorial, as the Tutorial ought to be. But as each, if 
properly organized and applied, has thus its several utilities ; we 
shall find, that as practically realized in this kingdom, the con- 
ditions of neither have been fulfilled. 

Professorial System. — The fundamental condition of this 
scheme is the superior qualification — learning, ability, and 
didactic skill — of the Professor. But how greatly this condition 
has been neglected, is shown in the wretched modes of academ- 
ical appointment prevalent in this country. (See pp. 368-381.) 

Tutorial System. — There are three conditions of the efficiency 
of this scheme : 1°, The application of the Tutorial numbers ; 
2°, The competency of the individual Tutors ; 3°, The sufficiency 
of the aco>l mically authorized books. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 727 

As to the first condition, and looking merely to Oxford, no at- 
tempt has been made to draw the Tutors from their isolation in 
the private houses, and to employ them, in larger or smaller plu- 
ralities, in exercising the academical alumni, collected into Uni- 
versity or public classes. And yet, the greatest and most dis- 
tinctive mean of Tutorial efficiency has thus, in the English 
Universities, remained unapplied. With a staff of very incom- 
petent Tutors, this measure could not, indeed, be accomplished. 
It could not even be attempted. But the necessity of its appli- 
ance would forthwith determine an elevation of Tutorial qualifica- 
tion. Those who had deemed themselves, and had been deemed 
by others, not incompetent for the function, so long as tuition 
lurked a torpid routine in the privacy of a college, would no 
longer appear even tolerable, so soon as their inferiority was 
brought into public, and into public comparison with the superi- 
ority of others. A beneficial competition would thus be deter- 
mined between the instructors ; all would endeavor to excel, and 
none be content to remain very far inferior. The necessity of 
taking measures for the better appointment of Tutors would soon 
follow, if this improvement had not indeed preceded ; and the 
students (besides the other benefits of such a class) would thus 
enjoy the triple advantage — of being variously exercised by a 
competent number of competent instructors — of hearing the same 
object considered by different intellects in different views — and 
of having placed before them the highest academical examples of 
erudition and ability. But such an organization of public classes 
under appointed Tutors, for the daily exercise of the students in 
general in their common studies — this, as I said, has never been 
attempted in either of the only two Universities in which the 
Tutorial sj^stem has prevailed ; and yet this application is the 
very mean through which that system can realize its chief ad- 
vantages. For a plurality of Tutors can do what can be done by 
no individual Professor. 

As to the second condition — the competency of the several 
Tutors — this has not only not been fulfilled ; but on the contrary, 
(as repeatedly observed), the Tutorial office has been abandoned 
by the University to the private incorporations, the members of 
which are, in general, neither Collegial Heads nor Collegial Fel- 
lows, from any literary merit. It is certainly true, that the 
University is not so totally dependent on individual competence 



72« APPLND1X III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

in the teacher, where the Tutorial system prevails, as where the 
Professorial. Still, however, it is dependent in a great degree ; 
and the memorable and melancholy consequences of the neglect, 
in Oxford, of the Tutors' competency are more than sufficient to 
manifest the clamant urgency for a prompt and fundamental re- 
formation of the abuse. (See pp. 671, sq). One prospective 
measure, corrective at least of the evil in the mass, presents it- 
self obtrusively. By statute, the condition of becoming Tutor is 
not a Fellowship but a Degree. (P. 393, &c.) The monopoly 
of privileged Tutorial, that is, now of academical, instruction by 
the members of the private incorporations, is an illegal usurpa- 
tion. I would, therefore, suggest, that no one should, henceforth, 
be eligible for this office (which by the proceedings of the Heads 
of Houses themselves, has long been privileged and public), who 
has not taken Primary Highest Honors; and that he should 
only be competent to act, at least as University Tutor, in that 
department wherein he shall have so graduated. I am, of course, 
aware, that some first class men may turn out comparatively 
poor instructors ; and that some laudable instructors may stand 
comparatively low in the Examination. But still, these are the 
exceptions. And although it might be proper to have a mean of 
conferring tutorial eligibility for special reasons, still it can not 
but be advantageous, to lay down a highest academical honor as 
the general condition of becoming Tutor. This would at once 
abolish the present unparalleled system of abuse ; which, com- 
paring the educational establishments of Oxford only with them- 
selves, allows one House to sink below another to some ten or 
twenty depths. — But as it is of consequence, that the several 
Tutors should be connected with individual Houses, it being of 
importance that College should rival College for the honors of the 
"University ; and as there is, at present, no other authority to 
which this patronage could be safely confided : I am not prepared 
to say, that the appointment of Tutor should be withdrawn from 
the Collegial Head. — At the same time, in the smaller Colleges, it 
might be advantageous, if two at least combined, and had in com- 
mon a single complement of Tutors. — Could not government be 
induced, to make a laudable exception of its arbitrary patronage, 
so that the Tutor (always generally in orders), who is not a 
Fellow, might, after a meritorious period of instruction claim a 
benefice in the Church? Equitably, a higher proportion of the 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 729 

fee, which the student ought now to pay for his superior educa- 
tion, should be allowed to those Tutors who do not enjoy the 
benefit of a Fellowship and its results. 

The third condition of the Tutorial system is, the sufficiency of 
the academically authorized books. — This condition, if adequately 
fulfilled, gives in my opinion, a decided advantage to the Tutorial 
over the Professorial scheme of education — at least as the latter 
is now constituted in this kingdom ; (and if combined with the 
second condition, even over the Professorial in its most perfect 
organization abroad.) For — 

In the first place, as existing among ourselves, the Professor is 
not improbably unequal to his office ; no method of academical 
patronage prevalent in Britain being good — one, in fact, is only 
more vicious than another. The standard of academical compe- 
tence is, consequently, low ; and the Professor too often, even on 
that low standard, an inadequate instructor. But on this matter 
I need not at present enter, having already treated of it in detail. 
(See pp. 345-381.) 

In the second place, the doctrine of a Professor is at best only 
the opinion of an individual. — If appointed by an incompetent, 
an irresponsible, a partial authority, he is probably of merely or- 
dinary talents, or of merely ordinary information ; in either case, 
therefore, his opinions, on the subject which he has an academical 
monopoly to teach, are not worth the knowing. — If the Professor 
be a man of talent, his ingenuity may easily mislead both himself 
and others; and, exempt from criticism, he may continue to pro- 
pagate for decades, with the authority of a privileged teacher and 
the contagion of admiring pupils, doctrines not only theoretically 
false, but practically dangerous ; doctrines which, if published to 
the world, are lightly analyzed into a tissue of sophistry and half 
knowledge. It may indeed be, that a Professorial course is trust- 
worthy and instructive, supplying a want in the patent literature 
of the subject ; or affording a useful introduction to its study. 
But this is rare. How few academical courses have been thought 
worthy of the press, even by self-love or the partiality of friend- 
ship ; and of those which have actually been published, how few 
have the public thought worthy of perusal ! But for the chance 
of such a possibility, I hardly think, that a great University, like 
Oxford (which has at its disposal a large and costly staff of Tutors, 
and, therefore, is not, like poorer Universities, dependent on Pro- 
fessors), would be wise, in preferring the dangerous probabilities 



730 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

of our present Professorial system, or even the favorable contin- 
gencies of any better which it is ever likely to compass. It 
would, in my humble opinion, be far safer to elevate its actual 
education by Tutors ; than, subverting that, to return to its old 
education by Professors (still statutory though this be), even 
with the best prospects of improvement. 1 

In the third place, there are in all or most of the departments 
of knowledge which a University, in its fundamental faculty, 
ought by preference to teach, certain essential parts, certain pri- 
mary or preparatory truths, certain books even, which it is of tho 
utmost consequence, that a student should, above all and before 
all, be made familiar with. 2 But these, for the very reason that 

1 I have latterly, in some subordinate points, modified my opinion on the Professorial 
and Tutorial systems, in reference to Oxford, and in reference to each other ; and this 
principally from three considerations. 

In the first place, I was formerly inclined to professorial, as the chief academical 
instruction, not certainly on its own account (for I always held, that what is good in 
a lecture would be better in a book) ; but because I saw therein the only mean of col- 
lecting the students in large classes : regarding a large, class as the necessary condi- 
tion of exercise ; and deeming exercise, if not the sole, as the paramount, function of 
a University in its general education. I had even, in theory, imagined a plurality of 
Professors on the same subject, in order to reduce the class of auditors to the possi- 
bility of being exercised ; thinking, perhaps, too much of the utility of professorial 
competition and the example of ancient Padua, too little of the countervailing evils 
and the example of Universities in general. But though this plan has been also ad- 
vocated by my learned friend, Mr. Bonamy Price, in his late ingenious " Suggestions 
for the extension of Professorial teaching in the University of Oxford," I can not 
now maintain it. It had not formerly occurred to me, that this exercise might be 
effected, and better effected, by other means than the Professor. Of this I am now 
persuaded. For, were the Tutors merely raised to their proper level as instructors, 
as without difficulty could be done, they might then easily be drawn from the College, 
and each, like a Professor, applied as an individual in the exercise of University 
classes. Nay, as the proper execution of this office requires numbers, the Tutors, in 
their plurality, could discharge it better than is possible by all the exertions of any 
single exerciser — of any Professor. 

In the second place, a maturer reflection has convinced me — that while the Tutors 
ought not to be abolished but improved ; their subjection, as subordinates to the per- 
sonal and arbitrary instruction of a Professor, would, by men of standing and intelli- 
gence, be felt as degrading, even were the Professor raised to what he ought to be, 
and as simply intolerable, were the Professor to remain at the present British level, 
that is, be no better than themselves. 

In the third place, if the Professorial system, for the non-physical — the non-exhibi- 
tory studies, were again restored, and still more if a plurality of Professors lectured 
on the same science, there could either no longer be any unity in the examination for 
a degree, or the subjects of examination must be divorced from the teaching of the 
academical instructor. 

To these three considerations there may be added & fourth ; — the improbability, that 
even if the Professorial system were re-established, it would be established on a pro- 
per footing, that is, on a footing such as is not yet realized in any University of this 
kingdom, and to the realization of which within herself, Oxford would make undoubt- 
edly a strenuous resistance. But such was the hypothesis. 

2 In tiuth, all the older (as indeed some of the later) Professorial " prelections." 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 731 

tliey are certain, while they at once supersede his speculations 
and occupy his course ; are apt to he omitted, or slurred over, 
or given, without reference to their author, even hy a Professor 
not ignorant of their relations and importance. The advantage of 
the taught is thus, too often, sacrificed to the glory of the teacher; 
the unhappy learner being inflated by the syllabub of novel para- 
dox, not nourished by the bread of ancient truth. The reverse 
of this a University ought to insure. And in the documents 
which an alumnus ought by preference to study, there is more 
than sufficient to exhaust the curriculum of Arts. A series of 
such documents therefore the University of Oxford, having adopt- 
ed the plan of Tutorial instruction, is even bound to provide and 
privilege ; as the materials of private study by the pupils — of 
explanation by the Tutors in the Colleges' — and of exercise by the 
Tutors in the " schools." 

But coming to the great question — Is this condition by Oxford 
adequately fulfilled ? — To this we must, without qualification, 
emphatically answer — No. Indeed every, the remotest requisite 
toward this fulfillment remains still unsupplied. There has in 
Oxford been no attempt even to organize an intelligent board by 
whom such designation, selection and collection might be care- 
fully, and continually made. The business of such a board of 
studies is neither easy nor temporary. The right performance 
of its duties supposes great learning and great judgment ; and its 
decisions of one year, it should be ready to revise and even to 
reverse, the next. It ought to be actuated by no motive but the 
scientific interest of the student ; and, of course, in its choice of 
works for academical reading, it would regard as foolish any lim- 
itation by country or by school. But such a selection is not more 
difficult than necessary. A University which employs a tutorial 
or semi-tutorial system is bound to have its own series of approv- 



were only explanatory of books ; and the various departments of the Faculty of Arts, 
throughout the Universities of Europe, owe their constitution, in fact, to Aristotle, 
whose different works (either in his plain text, or in this text and a commentary, or 
in an abstract from this text) were what the " Reader" attempted — were, indeed, what 
alone he was permitted to expound. The older Professors were therefore intermediate 
between our present Professors and our present Tutors. In Louvain, for example 
(p. 664, sq.), the Professors of the Pa:dagogia bore, perhaps, even more analogy to 
College Tutors than to University Professors. The older academical instructors thus, 
in fact, united what more recently have been severed. Nor was the union useless ; 
for beside combining the advantages of the two systems of teaching, professorial and 
tutorial, it comprised others of far higher consequence, in an unexclusive employment 
of all the means of exercise and excitation. 



732 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

ed books, for its own cycle of approved studies ; and among the 
" academical courses" which have, in consequence, been collected 
and composed, we possess some of the most valuable contribu- 
tions which have ever been made to learning and philosophy. 
But in this respect, Oxford has done absolutely nothing — beyond 
(to say nothing of religion) some indication of the vaguest in its 
Examination Statutes touching the age and character of the clas- 
sical works to which the candidate is limited. As once and again 
repeated, the central — the peculiarly academic province of specu- 
lative philosophy or philosophy proper is, in modern Oxford as in 
modern Cambridge, ignored. And in both, as has been also no- 
ticed, for the same reason — the average inability of the Tutors. 
The easier parts of Aristotle's system were indeed still retained ; 
but these might, in the circumstances, have been as well omit- 
ted ; because, read as fragments, and by minds undisciplined to 
abstraction, they could neither be understood themselves, nor 
stimulate the intellect to understand aught else. There was no 
gradation from the easy to the difficult, from the new to the old. 
Philosophy was taught, philosophy was learned more by rote than 
by reason ; and an abrupt intrusion of the tyro thinker into the 
Ethics or Politics of the Stagirite might discourage or disgust 
even a potential Montesquieu. Logic alone was studied in a 
modern summary. But here too the unphilosophical character 
of the Oxford philosophical discipline is apparent. That Univer- 
sity, having formerly adopted, still adheres to the Compendium 
of Aldrich, not because Aldrich was a learned dialectician, but an 
academical dignitary ; and the book, not overvalued by its able 
author, after leading and misleading Oxford logicians, during 
former generations, at last affords a more appropriate text for 
their corrections during the present. 1 But should Alma Mater 
thus lag behind her alumni ? 

3. The Instruction and its modes. — (Pp. 695, sq., and 718, sq.) 
The mode of instruction is varied by the various character of 
its objects. The knowledge which depends on the ocular demon- 
stration of costly collections and experiments ; — this knowledge, 
easy and palpable, requiring an appliance more of the senses than 
of the understanding, can be fully taught to all, at once, by one 
competent demonstrator. The teaching of the natural or physical 



1 See Mr. Mansel's Notes on the Rudimenta of Aldrich. Of these, without dispa- 
ragement to the Dean, it may be said — " La sauce vaut mieux que le poisson." 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 733 

sciences ought, therefore, as I have already observed, to be Pro- 
fessorial. On the contrary, the sciences which result less from 
perception than from thought, and which principally require, 
that the understanding of the learner should be itself vigorously 
applied ; these sciences, having no external exhibition, are not 
astricted to individual teaching, and if many can more effectually 
rouse the mind of the learner to elaborative exertion than one, 
will best be taught by a well organized plurality of teachers — in 
other words, through a good Tutorial system. This good Tuto- 
rial system, which supposes always a competency in the indivi- 
dual, is a combination of the private instruction by a Tutor in the 
College, and of the public discipline by Tutors in the University. 
The most important academical sciences — the cognitions, best 
in themselves, best as preparative for others, and best cultivating 
the mind of the student, are all of this latter kind. I would, 
therefore, prefer for them, perhaps absolutely, and certainly 
under the circumstances of Oxford, the improved Tutorial system. 
This supposes two conditions. It supposes — 

1°, Collegia], instruction by a Tutor — collegio-tutorial classes. 
— The student having by himself attentively perused, and, as far 
as possible, mastered a certain portion of a certain book, goes up 
along with his class-fellows of the same college to the Tutor's 
lecture. Here the pupil reads, repeats, and is examined ; his 
mistakes are corrected, his deficiencies supplied, and his diffi- 
culties solved. The Tutor, now never an inferior graduate, has 
his zeal and emulation stimulated toward an ever higher instruc- 
tion of his pupils ; conscious, that from day to day they are to 
be publicly tried, publicly collated, and that his own character 
and competence will, though indirectly, assuredly be meted by 
theirs. The pupils, on their part, are actuated still more strongly 
by the like feelings ; for their honor is directly interested in going 
down, as well as possibly prepared, into the important and public 
contest of the University class. Thus it is, that new life and 
strength would, under the improved system, be inspired into the 
collegial tuition ; and it might then be said of the Colleges of 
Oxford, no less truly than of the Colleges of Louvain (p. 667), 
"here no labor is spared, either by the Tutors in teaching, or by 
the Pupils in learning." This further supposes — 

2°, University discipline by Tutors — academico-tutorial classes. 
— The students who, in the several Houses, and under their sev- 
eral Tutors, have been prepared in the same book, are now to be 



■ 



734 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

collected for further examination, &c. into a public or University 
class. But as the number of such students might be so great, 
(trenching perhaps on four hundred), that they would, if congre- 
gated into a single class, baffle exercise ; and as, at the same 
time, it is of vital importance for the sake of competition, that 
the classes should not be made too small, it might hit the mean, 
so to divide them, that a hundred and fifty being the maximum, 
the correlative University classes might probably be three. 

In these classes (which might meet for an hour on five, or for 
an hour and a half on four days of the week), the students should 
be exercised in examination, oral and written, in compositions to 
be strictly criticised and read, &c. ; and so called up (as by the 
lottery of an alphabet), that it shall be impossible to anticipate 
the occurrence. These classes to be each conducted by at least 
three Tutors ; who may either remain in one, or circulate, more 
or less rapidly, through all. It might be better, probably, to 
have the Tutors specially appointed to the University classes, 
though the appointment ought only to be temporary ; and a cer- 
tain emolument should, likewise, be attached to this function. 
The office of University Tutor would thus be rendered at once 
of higher honor and of greater responsibility. In a class one 
Tutor should act as Presses ; but on what principle this pre-em- 
inence should be regulated, is a matter indeterminate and of' 
minor importance. No Tutor should examine or criticise his own 
pupils — Tutor and pupil should, in fact, be separated in all rela- 
tive to academical honors. In an exercitation of the students 
the plurality of the Tutors affords great advantages over the in- 
dividuality of a Professor ; and in such an exercising is comprised 
the most, and the most peculiar, of the benefits which academi- 
cal instruction affords. For Tutors being once competent to the 
work, maybe indefinitely multiplied according to its exigencies; 
whereas a Professor, if he do not, as he generally does, altogether 
neglect the labor, yet limits and must limit it, to the narrow 
sphere of his individual capabilities. 

The exercise of the student in the University classes, should 
be partly exigible, partly ultroneous. The former would simply 
qualify for a degree, through a mere certificate of attendance; 
whereas the latter would afford the mean toward distinction and 
class honors. 

Attendance on all the University classes should not be requisite 
for graduation, but only on a certain number. Some classes may 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 735 

be too elementary for some students ; and, on the contrary, some 
students, though not undeserving of a degree, may want the 
scholarship or capacity necessary for some classes. — Attendance 
to be secured and ascertained, by a catalogue called daily, or at 
irregular intervals.- — Certain classes to vary annually their books. 
The University classes, in general, ought to commence and 
finish with the academical year — that is, in the terms of Michael- 
mas and Trinity ; and attendance during three of these years 
should be required for a degree. This would, of course, necessi- 
tate a modification of the irregular entrance and the irregular 
attendance, still tolerated in the English Universities. The va- 
cations might perhaps remain unchanged ; for these cessations 
in the University classes could be usefully employed as seasons 
of domestic repetition or revisal. (See p. 699, note.) But on 
this and other matters of detail, I avoid speaking. 1 

1 There is another, though a minor, and merely collegia!, abuse, which could not 
survive the congregation of the academical youth for serious study in unexciusive 
classes! ; — I mean the foolish distinction of what (to say nothing of another, that of 
" Nobleman,") is usually called" Gentleman or Fellow Commoner ;" and which, though 
too contemptible for notice in the text, may be dispatched in a foot-note. To those 
ignorant of the English collegial system, be it known then, that for payment of an 
extra rate of Tutor's fees, room rent, &c, an intrant is admitted into certain Houses, 
under the above designation — dines at a different table from the other undergraduates 
— walks about in a peculiar garb — and is specially privileged to neglect the ordinary 
discipline, the ordinary necessity of study. " The Gentlemen Commoners" are, I 
find in Oxford, now in number nearly a hundred ; constituting a sixteenth part of the 
whole undergraduates. They are admitted by a majority of the Halls — by a minority 
of the Colleges. 

In every point of view, the distinction, name and thing, is, apart from the lucrative 
return to certain parties, utterly absurd. 

It is grammatically absurd. The word " Gentleman 1 '' properly means — " man of 
family ;" but the collegial distinction can now be purchased by any ; and is, indeed, 
peculiarly affected by those who have no other pretension, but this same purchase, 
to the inverse appellation. — It is historically absurd. For though of old, birth and 
wealth might, here as elsewhere, hold some mutual proportion ; in this country, at 
least, they now hold and have long held, none.— It is statistically absurd. For while 
in aristocratic Germany (where blood i3 legally discriminated and privileged), a Prince 
even of the Empire frequents his father's University in the plain guise of an ordinary 
"bursch;" in democratic England, where blood is not discriminated, far less privi- 
leged, by law, and in the richest, oldest and most venerable of our national Universities, 
each aspiring Snobson publicly ventilates his private purchase of an ironical gentility 
in silk and velvet. Here, we see, in one College, a far descended nobleman, assiduous 
in study as a simple commoner; and there, the issue of a topping tradesman, the 
scion, perhaps, of his lordship's tailor, idly rustling it as "Le Bourgeois Gentilhommc," 
in the next. — -It is socially absurd. For if " Gentleman" be taken in its popular ac- 
ceptation, for " man of honor," its attribution to a few is a gratuitous and groundless 
insult upon the many. But, in both its acceptations, the collegial distinction is, 
socially considered, a matter either of scandal or of contempt. — It is politically absurd. 
For the Crown itself, while it creates a nobleman, is unable to create a gentleman. 
Gentlemen, however, the. English colleges presume to make and unmake. But in 
truth, their conservative Heads do what in them lies radically to level ranks, by sub- 



736 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

4. The Excitement to Study. (Pp. 692, sq., and 717, sq.) 
Emulation is the one motive to diligence which the student 

verting in their Houses the natural aristocraey, of which, for a paltry gain, they con- 
cent to prostitute, vulgarize and render ridiculous the very name. With these col- 
legial heralds (as with some heraldic colleges), 

— " titulos rcgina Pecunia donat 
Et genus et proavos, sordesque parentis honestat." 

— It is academically absurd. For the distinction is, throughout Christendom, known 
only in the English Universities. In these, it is even unknown to the public and 
statutory University, either of Oxford or of Cambridge ; it originates exclusively in 
the license usurped by the private Houses, the Houses through which the national 
seminary has been illegally superseded ; and even of these, it is tolerated only in a 
minority of the Colleges, in a majority of the Halls, as an excuse for certain extra- 
ordinary charges, while in the (educationally) best — indeed, in most of the Pluuses, 
it has been abolished, as at once a nuisance and an opprobrium. But the abuse is 
carried to its climax — carried, indeed, into another category, by being made, in many 
cases, a mean of pecuniary extortion. Accommodation in a licensed House is. in 
the English Universities, necessary, and, at the same time, now limited ; a long pre- 
vious application is requisite for admission into the better Houses ; and the others 
are thus able, without leaving their lodgings unlet, to compel the intrant to compound 
for the sham title and the suicidal privileges, which are paid for — and despised. Nor 
by these colleges can it be said — " My poverty and not my will consents ;" for to aggra- 
vate still farther the disgrace, the wealthiest foundations are the principal extortionists. 

But, finally and principally, it is educationally absurd. The Houses profess to 
afford the means of education, to replace, in fact, of themselves, the University ; and 
yet, in so far as they maintain this distinction, they do all within their power, to 
frustrate the whole scantling of instruction which they now dispense. For, as re- 
gards the members themselves styled "Gentlemen Commoners:" — these, admitted, 
ostensibly for education, are relieved from educational discipline, albeit precisely those 
for whom such discipline is most imperiously requisite. They are virtually told, in- 
deed, by collegial wisdom, that though academical residence may be a fashionable 
form, academical study is of very trivial importance. — And, as regards the other 
members : — there is thus authoritatively introduced, fostered, paraded, and imposed, 
in what ought, in what professes, to be a domestic society for sedulous application, 
a contagious example of favored idleness, insubordination, and contempt of knowl- 
edge. " It is at College above all places," says Napoleon (Bourrienne, I. xxv.) " that 
equality should prevail." At least, the only inequality recognized in a seminary of 
education should be that of intellect and learning. In Oxford and Cambridge, how- 
ever, some Houses still think differently. To pay more, to learn less, in them obtains 
academical distinction — is actually proclaimed, in these foci of illumination, the cri- 
terion of a " Gentleman !" — Especial honor is therefore due to those " gentlemen,'' 
who prove themselves not idlers, though thus collegially privileged, nay encouraged 
to be idle. 

The absurdity is, however, so singular, so flagrant, so perverse, and withal so 
vulgar ; that, while at present in the reawakening spirit of the Universities, it only 
languishes in the privacy and division ("Divide et impcra,") of the — not best Col- 
leges and Halls : the snobbism would perish forthwith (if from no other cause) under 
public ridicule, were the students once again collected into classes in the public 
schools ; — though I do not imagine, that the patrons of the practice would in these 
venture to propose " reserved seats." But as the distinction is personally profitable, 
and as to some minds, what is personally profitable appears always to be universally 
expedient ("What will not man defend 1") we may be sure, that for this, among 
other motives, will any restoration of a public and university education be strenuously 
resisted — if possible ; for a recovery of the University to health, would infallibly, at once, 
determine a cure of this scabies dcbilitatis in that learned body. And the Houses — they 
can not, surely, always be allowed, both to subvert and to dishonor the University. 



.OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 737 

may be safely supposed to bring with him to the University ; and 
this motive, as we have seen, Oxford does not fully employ. To 
correct this deficiency, there are certain conditions which it is 
requisite to fulfill. 

In the first place, there are the conditions of publicity, num- 
bers, and co-equality. These would be conjunctly supplied, were 
the alumni of the University once again collected from the privacy 
of Hall and College into the publicity of the academic " Schools" 
— from classes of an average of seven or eight (Coplestone's esti- 
mate) to classes of a hundred or a hundred and fifty. 

In the second place, the competition roused in large and publio 
classes can alone supply the deficiencies of the public examination 
for a degree, viewed as an instrument of emulation ; for in them 
may the stimulus be applied to all, and to all during their whole 
course of academic study. 

In the third place, the condition of exercise (Examination, Dis- 
putation, Writing, &c.) as the mean through which the learner 
may distinguish himself, can alone, or alone in any adequate 
degree, be made effective in large and public classes. For only 
in exercise can the powers of a competitor be drawn forth into 
energy; and as only in such classes is exercise available, so only 
in such classes can that energy be compared, estimated, and ade- 
quately honored. 

This honor may be awarded by the suffrage, either of the 
whole class (taught and teacher) or by the Tutors alone. A com- 
bination of the two would, I think, be preferable; and perhaps 
thus : — Suppose that the students of the same book are distribu- 
ted into three University classes ; each amounting to the maxi- 
mum of a hundred and fifty. At the close of the academical 
year, let the (regular) attenders of a class designate by suffrage, 
say thirty (or twenty) of their number, as worthy of the first, 
second, &c, place of honor. These honored students may be- 
divided into decades. The nine decades may then be taken by 
the Tutors of the three classes acting together ; the students of 
the corresponding decade all tried against each other; and the 
whole thirty finally subordinated in the order of merit. This 
ultimate arrangement would thus be partly the work of the pu- 
pils, partly of the Tutors. — The whole division into decades may, 
however, and perhaps profitably, be omitted ; the final distribu- 
tion of the ninety places of honor among the ninety preferred 
students, being, with any adequate restriction, left to the Tutors. 

3A 



738 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

Before the suffrages of a class are taken, a solemn promise (in 
fact an oath) of conscientious performance of duty to be required 
of all voters by the presiding Tutor ; and (to make the perform- 
ance more easy) the suffrages to be given in writing, with the 
voter's signature, to be known, therefore, only, as counted by 
the Tutors. The Tutors themselves to promise in like manner. 
The list of honors to be printed in large characters ; a copy sent 
to each House; and one framed and hung up in some public 
place of the University. It should appear perhaps in the Cal- 
endar. 

5. The Degree or Certificate of Proficiency in Arts. (Pp. 704, 
and 720, with 663, sq.) 

It is proper, in the first place, to state what Oxford has done 
in this respect, And here it is necessary to distinguish the past 
and the prospective legislations of the University, establishing, 
as they do, two very different schemes of Examination for thia 
degree. 

By the past legislation of the University, I mean that com- 
mencing in 1807. In this, down to the present time (to say 
nothing of the E,esponsions), 1°, there was only a single exam.' 
{nation, and this first competent in the thirteenth term or com- 
mencement of the fourth year; and 2°, in that examination there 
were only tivo Departments of trial and distinction — the LitercB 
Humaniores, and the Disciplines Mathematics et Physicce — 
which latter was wholly optional to the candidate. So far all 
was uniform. But several steps, through several statutes, mul- 
tiplied the classes of honor in each department, from two to four ; 
persons in the same class being always accounted equal, and 
alphabetically arranged. 

By the new statute (passed in 1850, and to commence in the 
Easter Examination of 1853), the preceding scheme is changed 
in sundry important points. — Besides the Responsions — there are 
to be two Examinations, with tivo relative Classifications: the 
First, commencing with the eighth and ending with the twelfth 
term; the Second, commencing with the thirteenth and ending 
with the eighteenth term (normally at least and for honors). — 
The First of these Examinations has, as of old, two Departments, 
and these nearly the same ; to wit, Greek and Latin Literature^ 
and Pure Mathematics — which last is now, as formerly, wholly 
optional. Each of these departments is to have only a First and 
Second Class of Honor. In these classes all the candidates are, 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 739 

as hitherto, equal — their names being alphabetically arranged. 
For the first time, the names of those who pass without honor 
are to be published. — The Second Examination, which is new, has 
four departments, or, as they are not happily called, "Schools ;" 
to wit, Humane Letters — Mathematical and Physical Sciences 
— Natural Science — Jurisprudence and Modern History. Each 
of these departments has, what is old, four Classes of Honor, in 
which the names follow alphabetically, and are of course pub- 
lished. But besides these classes, the names of those who merely 
pass, are henceforth, as in the first examination, to be also re- 
corded. — To qualify for a degree, it is necessary to pass again in 
the department of Humane Letters, and (besides attending two 
courses of Public Lectures in the University) to pass in some one 
of the other three. 

Neither of these schemes, though both in certain respects are 
praiseworthy, seems to me such as ought to satisfy a University, 
and that the University of Oxford. In so far as encouragement 
is thus given to pursuits useful, as well objectively in the pursuit 
of other studies, as subjectively, in the cultivation of the student's 
mind, they are of course deserving of approbation. But these 
ends, neither scheme of examination appears at all adequately to 
accomplish. In fact, while the former shows as imperfect and 
redundant, the latter shows not only as imperfect and redundant, 
but even as suicidal. 

In the first place, the imperfection, common to both the 
schemes, is manifested in the want — academically unexampled 
out of the illegal condition of the English Universities — of a 
really philosophical department, for study and examination. But 
of this I have already spoken (pp. 710, sq.) 

In the second place, the redundance, common to both, lies in 
the mathematical department (pure and applied). Mathematical 
study, it is perhaps idle to repeat, we here consider, not in its 
objective relation as a mean in or toward certain material sciences ; 
but in its subjective relation exclusively, as a mean of cultivating 
the capacity itself of thought. In this point of view, I have 
already shown, and at great length (pp. 257-324, 640-670), that 
it is useless, even detrimental, if not applied temperately and 
with due caution ; for instead of invigorating, it may enervate the 
reasoning faculty, and is, therefore, a study undeserving of an 
indiscriminate encouragement in a liberal education of the mind. 

In this relation, Oxford seems at fault, in both its schemes of 



740 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

examination. In the former, the Mathematical sciences obtained 
one of the two departments between which the academical grad- 
uation trial was divided ; though Oxford, leaving always these 
sciences wholly optional to the candidate, stands in favorable con- 
trast with Cambridge. For this University making Mathematics, 
and Mathematics alone, a passport to its degree and relative dis- 
tinctions ; in fact, seemed as if it acted on the futile inscription 
falsely imagined over Plato's school. 

In the prospective statute the inconsistency is, perhaps, even 
enhanced. For here, though Mathematics are still always option- 
al, they, however, constitute ostensibly a moiety of the first ex- 
amination. But the policy of the Oxford Convocation in conced- 
ing to the Disciplines Mathematicae a half of the whole academi- 
cal honors, is shown to be unwise, even by the evidence drawn 
from the Oxford examinations themselves. And thus : 

Looking firstly to the Instructed. — For the decade from 1838 
to 1847, we have the following results : All the honors in D. M. 
(255) bear the proportion to all the honors in L. H. (923) of some- 
what more than & fourth. Again, about four- fifths (79 out of 106) 
of the First Class of L. H. are in no class of D. M. at all ; whereas 
only about one-fifth (10 out of 48) of the First Class of D. M. are 
in no class of L. H Finally, there are six-sevenths of men classed 
in L. H. who are in no class of D. M. (822 to 124) ; whereas there 
is hardly more than a half (136 out of 260) of those having an 
honor in D. M. and no honor in L. H. In fact, those taking a 
Mathematical honor amount even to a number, thus compara- 
tively small, in consequence of the comparative facility by which 
such a distinction can always be obtained. 

Looking, secondly, to the Instructors. — The Table (p. 673) 
exhibits a still more striking illustration in reference to them ; 
for the teachers, and in particular the tutors, should, if at all com- 
petent to their function, manifest a greatly larger proportion of 
highest honors in a department specially encouraged by the Uni- 
versity, than the undergraduates at large, even of the highest 
colleges. But mark what is the case. Nineteen Houses alone 
have any recognized Tutor ; the other five are consequently 
beyond criticism. Of the nineteen : Out of the highest twelve, 
only two (5 and 7) have even a single Tutor in this First Class ; 
and no House has more. Mathematical talent rises, however, as 
the Houses sink. Of these the next low T er, and but for one the 
lowest, six, show each a Tutor thus honored. There are, conse- 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 741 

quently, in all, eight Tutors with the highest (that is the one not 
disqualifying) Mathematical distinction, and forty-one without 
it ; a proportion, in other words, of less than a sixth. — And to 
descend even to the lowest; Jive Houses (four Colleges and one 
Hall), have among their Tutors no honors whatever; while three 
Colleges rejoice in a third class ; and three also in a second. 

I am far from disparaging the present members of the Univer- 
sity of Oxford, for this deficiency in Mathematical study. On the 
contrary, I think that the indifference to Mathematical distinction, 
there now manifested, both by teachers and by taught, is cer- 
tainly not greater than the educational inexpediency of mathe- 
matical study might amply warrant. But granting this, the prac- 
tice of Oxford, if its attribute be prudence, condemns the wisdom 
of its own legislature. Nothing, indeed, can be more irrational, 
than for a University specially to encourage, and to encourage, 
too, at the expense of others, a study, both so worthless in itself 
as an educational mean, and, notwithstanding all external and 
factitious fostering, so justly rated at the proper value by its own 
members in general, teachers as well as taught. Is this denied? 
The dilemma then emerges : — If Mathematics be truly deserving 
of academical protection, in a course of liberal -education, what 
must be thought of a University which abandons so indispensable 
a science to hventy-four seminaries — to forty '-nine Tutors, only 
eight of whom — are not proved comparatively incompetent to 
teach it? If, on the other hand, this science be unworthy of aca- 
demical encouragement, what must be thought of a University, 
which, at the cost of the other moiety of its instruction, accords 
to a subjectively useless or detrimental study one-half of its formal 
education, one-half of its formal honors ? 

In leaving the Mathematical disciplines always optional to the 
candidate, Oxford acted, in my opinion, rightly. But why, 
regarding Mathematical study as of so ambiguous a use, as to be 
wholly unnecessary, even to those whom it distinguished by the 
highest honors, Oxford should still accord to so doubtful, so dis- 
pensable a study, a full half of its professed education, and a full 
half of its proclaimed distinction ; — this, I confess, appears to me 
an insoluble contradiction. From the new Examination Statute, 
we have seen, that Mathematics (pure and applied), are to consti- 
tute one of the three optional "Schools," in the second examina- 
tion. So far, so reasonably. But why in the First Examination, 
pure Mathematics should be still left, though still always unin- 



742 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

forced, to counterbalance, in appearance, the all-important cycle 
6f imperative instruction, comprised under the name of Greek 
and Latin Literature ; — what is this but a remnant of the old 
inconsistency — of the former futile attempt at conciliating two 
conflictive opinions ? 

In the third place, the new or prospective statute is suicidal : 
for it tends to reduce the value of the very honors which it pro- 
poses to enhance. This effect is direct ; and results not from one, 
but from many various causes. 

1°. To speak first of the same department: — The value of an 
Honor depends upon its unity. — What is prized, as singular, is 
disregarded or contemned, as plural. The imagination, in fact, is 
no longer agreeably affected ; it must even exert itself, and not 
unpainfully, to escape confusion. How much more satisfactory 
is it, on the present scheme, to be of a First Class, with its one 
possible contingency; than, on the future scheme, to be of a First 
Class, certainly, but of a First Class varying for better for worse, 
uncertainly to any of the seven unequal combinations of a highest 
honor in the same department. Thus, the division of the honor 
into two is, for its own value, for its own efficiency, to be depre- 
cated. No harm, on the contrary, could have ensued— indeed, it 
would have been a manifest improvement — to allow the candi- 
date to divide his examination, to give up one class of books or 
subjects at an earlier period, another at a later, and then to have 
all his answers taken conjunctly into account, in determining his 
rank in one ultimate and first published classification. But of this 
again. 

2°, An Honor is prized in proportion to its rarity. But twenty 
classes, comprising six First Classes of Honor, are henceforth to 
"be awarded, where eight and tivo, respectively, were heretofore 
conceded ; academical Honors therefore will incontinently become 
cheap and vulgar, from their very numbers. 

3°, But what, besides vulgarity and cheapness, reduces Honors 
to the lowest, is that, though nominally equal, these are not the 
equal rewards of equal talent and exertion. This absurdity at 
once debases a whole system of Honors ; what had previously 
been respected, is now indiscriminately despised. Such a result 
will, I am constrained to think, be the natural, even the neces- 
sary; consequence of the new statute. We have here four or six 
rows of Honors — of Classes, the same in name, in rank, in num- 
ber, and assigned to four or six co-ordinate departments of knowl- 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 743 

edge. Apparently, and for aught that the statute intimates, all 
these co-ordinate departments and corresponding classes convey 
to a candidate the same amount of honor. He is equally by the 
University a supremely distinguished graduate, whether he be 
First Class in one or other of the departments. And yet the 
truth is, that here there can be no proportion between depart- 
ment and department, between class and class. A man may fail 
after long years of toil in meriting the Highest Honor in one 
department, who may obtain it in another, by the amusing occu- 
pation of a few weeks. The absurdity is however carried to its- 
climax, when it is considered that the University here stimu- 
lates the shorter, easier, more attractive, but less useful study, to 
a neglect of the study, more useful, though less attractive, easy,. 
and short. The University, in fact, thus errs in a sixfold man- 
ner. In encouraging, what — 1°, needs no encouragement; and 
2°, is less deserving of it ; in not adequately encouraging, what — 
3°, needs encouragement ; and 4°, is more deserving of it ; for, 
5°, it awards the same amount of honor to the brief, facile,, 
amusing, and to the tedious, difficult, irksome ; thus 6°, pro- 
moting what requires and merits no protection, at the expense, 
even, of what pre-eminently does both. Many years ago, I con- 
tended (p. 340) that of all British Universities, Oxford (from acci- 
dental circumstances, indeed), stood alone, in affording, however 
inadequately, to solid learning the preference and encouragement 
academically due ; and stated it as my " conviction, that if the- 
legislature did its duty, Oxford was the British University sus- 
ceptible of the easiest and most effectual regeneration." But this, 
if the present statute be allowed to stand, I can no longer even 
hope ; and now that this ancient school itself has been drawn into 
the vulgar vortex, I contemplate nothing but our Universities^ 
one and all, declining into popular seminaries for a cultivation of 
the superficial, the amusing, the palpable, the materially useful. 
Were it indeed attempted, under this statute, to equalize a class 
in one department with the corresponding class in another, th© 
attempt, if possible, would conduce only to render matters worse. 
For example, could a highest Honor in the "Natural Sciences/* 
only be obtained like a highest Honor in the co-ordinate depart- 
ment of "Humane Letters," after an arduous and engrossing 
study during many years ; then would application be diverted 
from the fundamental, total, and comparatively useful, to the. 
adventitious, fragmentary, and comparatively useless. But this 



744 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

is impossible. The Natural Sciences are essentially easy ; requir- 
ing comparatively little talent for their promotion, and only the 
most ordinary capacity for their acquisition. Their study, there- 
fore, does not cultivate the mind. As Bacon remarks of induc- 
tion applied to physical pursuits : — " Nostra via inveniendi scien- 
tias exaequat fere ingenia, et non rnultum exoellentice eorum re- 
linquit. . . . Hsec nostra (ut ssepe diximus), felicitatis cujusdam 
Bunt potius quam facultatis, et potius temporis partus quam 
ingenii." (N. 0. i. $ 122.) In thus honoring the easy and amus- 
ing, equally with the difficult and painful, our Alma Mater imi- 
tates the nurse who would bribe the child by the same reward, 
to a dose of bitters or to a sugar plum. The comparative inutil- 
ity of all the new " Schools,''''' with the old department of Mathe- 
matics, is indeed virtually confessed in the prospective statute it- 
self. For the candidate is herein allowed to omit all of these 
except some one ; the University thus according its highest Honor 
to his proficiency in a kind of knowledge which it admits to be 
unnecessary, and although he may be no proficient in any knowl- 
edge of any of the kinds which it proclaims as indispensable. 
The only commendation merited by this statute, is, that it shows 
in favorable contrast to the Cambridge Examination Graces of 
1848, l of which it is, however, manifestly an imitation. For both 



1 This is saying little in favor of the Oxford Statute, for the Cambridge regulation 
equals even the worst measures in that University, and is wholly unparalleled in any 
Other. The thing is not only illegal, but beneath criticism ; if regarded as aught 
higher than a tax on the undergraduates of Arts, in favor of all and sundry who, in 
the Cambridge spectral faculties of Law, Medicine, &c, are accidentally decorated 
with the nominal status of Professor. The students of the Liberal Arts are taxed for 
the profit, among sundry others, of two Professors of Medicine, two of Law. But 
while thus commended to special sciences, which no other University has ever even 
proposed to the alumni of its general faculty, the Cambridge student of this faculty 
has no opportunity afforded him of becoming acquainted with what all other Universi- 
ties, and Cambridge itself by statute, justly regard as the most essential of preparatory 
disciplines. This new regulation is, indeed, only the last of a series of illegalities, 
calculated, not for the permanent good of the nation and University, but for the tempo- 
rary advantage of the usurping interest. In Cambridge the student is now, and has 
long been, taught, not what and how he ought to learn, but what and how it is possi- 
ble — it is convenient for that interest to teach him. — Even in the preparatory faculty, 
he is, therefore, treated to Mathematics, not to Logic ; inured to calculate like a machine, 
not disciplined to reason like an intelligence. The easier sciences — Physics — Physi- 
ology — Physic even, are presented to him at random, and in various forms ; Psychology 
and the more arduous gymnastic of philosophy, in none. His attention is multifariously 
expanded on the world without ; but, never is his reflection contorted on the world 
within. If many things, both right and wrong, be taught him of material forces, he 
learns nothing whatever of mental powers ; and though, perhaps, superficially indoc- 
tiinatcd touching the functions of his body, he is left scientifically uninstructed, that 
he even has a soul. — In all this illegal Cambridge (with the partial — I say the partial 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 745 

measures innovate in the same ways ; "both curiously invert the 
very purpose of an academical honor ; and both seem more or 
less intended to bestow on the Professors who, in any defunct 
faculty of the University, chance to have a titular existence, a 
certain profit out of the candidates proceeding in the still living 
faculty of Arts. 

The principles which I have stated of academical education, 
(pp. 691, 693, 704, sq., 710, sq., 720), would here require the 
following fulfillments. (It is proper, however, parenthetically to 
premise, that I here say nothing of Religion. In this respect, I 
wholly acquiesce in the views of the Oxford legislature — that a 
certain amount of theological information should be required of 
candidates, but that theology ought not to be proposed as a study 
in the faculty of Arts, from which academical distinction should 
be won.) 



exception of illegal Oxford), stands alone. — Indeed, whatever mechanism for the time 
the Tutors were capable of teaching, that in Cambridge has been always sure of being 
academically proclaimed — the one thing worthy to be academically taught. Above a 
century and a half ago, Philosophy was tutorially contracted to the easy mechanism 
of Physics, and extended to the easier mechanism of Mathematics. For sixty years, 
as has been said, after the appearance of the " Principia," the physical doctrines of 
Newton were treated by the Tutors of his own University as false and perplexing in- 
novations, and the (self-styled) romances of Descartes, who also confessed the anti- 
logical effect of mathematical study (p. 271) — continued to be there collegially incul- 
cated, as the only elements of a sound and scientific education. Compelled, at length, 
to follow the age and its intelligence, for fifty years, Newtonianism in Physics and 
Mathematics remained in Cambridge the symbol of academical orthodoxy. But, finally, 
for the last fifty years, the most mechanical Mathematics — the algebraic analysis, 
educationally condemned by Newton (p. 305) — has risen to a decided predominance in 
Cambridge ; and that school is now at once anti-Newtonian, anti-Cartesian, anti- 
geometric. Of what value, then, are the recent opinions of the Cambridge Syndicate 
or Cambridge Senate, in regard to " the superiority of Mathematics, as the basis of 
General Education V Would they seriously maintain (the reverse of all authority, as 
indeed of obtrusive fact), that mathematicians, cut of mathematics, reason better than 
their neighbors 1 

The very constituting of interested parties into the official, and (even exceptionally) 
unsworn arbiters of sufficiency and distinction, would be decisive of the new " Triposes" 
■ — for the absurdity does not apply to the old. In every University where such impolicy 
has been followed, as, indeed, it too generally has, degrees and academical honors have 
there become contemptible. But, in this instance, Cambridge abandons the function 
of trial and classification to these ex officio examiners, who, in all respects unlike the 
other special examiners, are both unrestrained by any form of obligation, and yet beset 
by interests of various kinds, inciting them to attract competitors from the old Triposes 
to the new, by rendering the. honors of the easier and more amusing studies, more easy 
also of attainment. The Oxford statute avoids many of these errors. The examiners 
it appoints, are specially constituted ad. hoc — sworn — and not interested ; nor does it 
tax the students of Arts for the Professors of Law, Medicine, &c. — But as if to con- 
summate the absurdity of the Cambridge regulations, while the aspirants of the new 
Triposes are left absolutely free, no one is allowed to compete for Classical distinction 
who has not previously taken a Mathematical honor ! 



746 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

1°, The University should confine its highest honors to those 
departments of study which are most arduous, being, at the same 
time, subjectively and objectively most useful. This would limit 
the departments thus honored to two ; the one of which may be 
denominated that of Humane Letters, the other, that of Philoso- 
phy. The former is of empirical, the latter of rational knowledge. 

Empirical knowledge is a knowledge of the fact. Humane 
Letters would thus comprehend all dexterity at language, all 
familiarity with literary products, all acquaintance with histori- 
cal record. This department, by the conditions stated, should in 
a great measure be limited to the domain of Greek and Roman 
letters. 

Rational knowledge is a knowledge of the cause or reason. 
Philosophy would thus comprehend — in a proximate sphere, the 
science of mind in its, faculties, its laws, and its relations (Psy- 
chology, Logic, Morals, Politics, &c.) ; in a less proximate sphere, 
the science of the instrument of mind (Grammar, Rhetoric, Poetic, 
&c); in a remoter sphere, the science of the objects of mind 
(Mathematics, Physics, &c). The conditions stated would ex- 
clude this last section from the department of highest honor; for 
the sciences which it comprises are subjectively too unimproving 
and objectively too eccentric, too vast, and withal too easy, if 
not too attractive, to be proposed as academical disciplines of 
preparation. The Oxford distinction of the Mathematical and 
Physical sciences, into a department by themselves, is therefore, 
I think, right ; as right, also, the leaving the study of that depart- 
ment to the option of the candidate. I must, however, dissent 
from Oxford theory (contradicted, as has been seen, by Oxford 
practice), which elevates, or has elevated, this section of science 
into one of the two departments of highest honor; for I would 
not only divide (what is still confounded), the Lilera Humaniores 
into the two, and two exclusive, departments of highest honor, 
but relegate the Discipline Mathematical to a lower order, of 
which I am soon to speak. The present confusion of the Empir- 
ical and the Rational in the one department of Literal Human- 
iores, originated in the inability of the Tutors, as at present con- 
stituted, to teach Philosophy as it was taught of old, and as by 
statute it should be taught still. The elevation of the University 
teacher is consequently a condition of the restoration of Philoso- 
phy to its proper place ; and of these I have previously spoken 
(pp. 710-717.) 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 747 

Leaving then Humane Letters and Philosophy (apart from the 
Mathematical and Physical sciences), as two departments, afford- 
ing two several series of primary honors ; it is evident, that as pro- 
ficiency in either or in both of these affords the exclusive qualifi- 
cation for a highest academical distinction, so a minimum, not 
in one hut in each, ought to be established as the condition of a 
degree at all. What, however, the amount, and what the con- 
tents of these minima should be — this as a matter of detail I 
overpass. 

When a candidate aspires to honors, as I have already said, 
it might be an improvement to allow him to give up his books 
and take his trial, in part, before a last examination ; provided, 
that a plan could be devised, whereby the value of his two ex- 
aminations could be fixed, added, and duly rated in a decisive 
classification. Of this I shall speak in the sequel. 

2°, Besides the departments of study, which, as most arduous 
in themselves, and also most useful, both subjectively as mental 
disciplines, and objectively as conditions of an ulterior progress 
in knowledge, merit pre-eminent encouragement in the funda- 
mental faculty of a University : there are other departments, 
which it is proper that a University should, in a lower degree, 
promote; care being taken, that the minor favor shown to the 
latter, do not interfere with the higher favor due to the former. 
All the studies not the necessary conditions of a degree are to be 
excluded from its higher distinctions; and this, by the admission 
of a University itself. Thus Oxford, in leaving (rightly, I have 
said), Mathematics to be taken up or not for examination, as the 
candidate may himself think fit, virtually confesses, that as a 
mathematical minimum is not a requisite for its degree, so a 
mathematical proficiency is not an attainment to be distinguished 
by its highest honors. For (as a selection must be rigorously 
made), a University ought not to encourage by its chief distinc- 
tion a science which it does not view as of absolute necessity ; 
since thus it would frustrate even its own end, by promoting the 
unessential at the expense of the essential. This must, in fact, 
tend to frustrate even the honor itself. For the competitors would 
be few, the standard low, and the distinction consequently under- 
valued. And of what account are the mathematical honors in 
Oxford, we have already seen. It may, indeed, be doubted, 
whether, in that University, these honors do not operate as 
much in counteracting the study of Literse Humaniores, as in 



/48 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

promoting the discipline for which they were exclusively organ- 
ized. 

On this special ground (and independently of the general pro- 
priety of the measure), Mathematics ought, in Oxford, to he re- 
legated to that lower order of sciences, proficiency in which should 
entitle a candidate to honor certainly, but to honor decisively in- 
ferior in decree to that awarded to excellence in the sciences 
comprised in the higher. Beside, therefore, the superior studies, 
in which a certain minimum of progress is necessary for an aca- 
demical degree, and to the various pitches of proficiency in which 
the various amounts of highest academical honor are due; a 
University may, further, reasonably require, as a condition of 
its degree, a certain competency in some one or more of certain 
inferior studies, and it may also reward any greater progress in 
these, by an inferior honor. Of this order are many branches of 
knowledge which, as easier and more attractive, do not require 
external promotion, or which, as less useful, subjectively and 
objectively, do not, by comparison, deserve it. Of this order are 
all " the schools" in the new Oxford statute, with the exception 
of the LiterEe Humaniores ; these ought not, I think, to appear 
here at all. But to this secondary order of alternatively optional 
studies, about which, as less essential, we need be less scrupu- 
lous, I would add a certain mastery of the principal modern lan- 
guages. For, assuredly, the candidate who is able to follow out 
his pursuits, without impediment, through French, German, 
Italian, &c, is less unworthy of a degree, than the candidate who, 
ignorant of these tongues, still passes for the minimum, or even 
obtains an honor in some of the secondary departments. 

But again : A University, like Oxford, which employs Tutorial 
instruction, and consequently limits the academical study of the 
pupil to a determinate series of approved books, has, at its dis- 
posal, certain powerful means of insuring and ascertaining the 
proficiency of candidates for a degree; and should these remain 
unapplied, the University may justly be reproached for neglecting 
or for not understanding the peculiar advantages of its peculiar 
system. 

The first of these advantages — is the capability, in so far as 
that may be expedient, of regulating the order of academical 
Study. The objects of this study are not all, are not even for 
the most part, isolated from each other. Many stand in consecu- 
tion. Certain subjects, certain books, can only be profitably 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 749 

studied after others. A University, like Oxford, can theruforo 
usefully prescribe, not only, in general, that the higher shall 
always presuppose the lower ; but articulately, what are the sub- 
jects, and what the books, which ought to be consecutively 
studied. This is even a duty for such a University; and the 
series being once promulgated, there is no hardship on the candi- 
date for a degree in being subsequently obliged to accommodate 
his reading to the proper order of study. Such a regulation, 
though it ought not, of course, to be carried beyond certain bounds, 
will naturally cause the greater number of the books given up by 
candidates to be the same; and this identity, in the object matter 
of examination, will render it, as we shall see, a very easy prob- 
lem to ascertain with the minutest accuracy the comparative 
proficiency of examinees. 

The second of these advantages— —is, that the books of study 
and examination being limited, these Books can be comparatively 
rated; that is, a determinate value (to be expressed therefore by 
a certain number), may be publicly assigned to each. If a candi- 
date answer the questions proposed to him on any book, all and 
all fully, he would naturally be entitled to the whole number at 
which the book is rated. Should a candidate fall short of this 
completeness and accuracy, the value of his answers could be 
expressed by any smaller number, down even to zero ; nay, if it 
were requisite, a negative number might punish bis presumption, 
and fall to be deducted from any positive amount which he might, 
otherwise obtain. Did the answers transcend simple plenitude 
and correctness, a number above the full value of the book migbt, 
but only as an extraordinary exception, be allowed.— I need hardly 
add, that a book may have a value in more than one department; 
it may, for example, avail, and variously, in Humane Letters, or 
in Philosophy, or in both. A separate estimate should therefore 
be assigned to it in reference to each. 

The third of these advantages- — is, that the several Classes can 
be deter minutely valued, and this value with great utility, publicly 
made known. The several books being articulately rated ; and 
the rule, by which their amount can be made available by candi- 
dates, being understood ; it follows, even as a matter of course, 
that the University should state the amounts — the numbers, 
which being attained in a certain department, would entitle to 
its several classes. 

The fourth of these advantages — is, that instead of leaving 



750 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

them, as at present, unarranged, we might have Candidates of 
the same class placed therein before and after other, according to 
the rated value of their examinations ; nay, if numbers were 
affixed to names, the men of one class and of one examination 
might be brought into collation with those of another. Were this 
arrangement, indeed, realized in the case of First Classes alone, 
still would the principal advantage of the measure be compassed. 
For it is only in a First Class that signal risings of individual 
above individual are possible ; but for a University, without 
necessity, to equalize such differences, is, if not unjust, certainly 
inexpedient. In this respect Louvain and even Cambridge may 
afford a profitable example to Oxford. 

The fifth advantage — is, that there might thus be one Honor 
and a double Examination. It would be a great improvement if 
the object-matter of examination could be taken up in, at least, 
one installment ; and this persuasion seems to have determined 
the views of the Oxford legislature, in recently dividing the exam- 
ination for Literal Humaniores and Discipline Mathematical into 
two. But, as already stated, I can not but regard their division 
of the honor along with the examination as most unfortunate: 
though, indeed, not having adopted such subordinate measures as 
have now been detailed, it would, for them, have been impossible 
to render a double trial available to a single classification. I say, 
that it is expedient to divide the Examination: and this, were it 
only that the candidate might be more accurately and fairly 
tried ; while less superiority would accrue to the merely animal 
advantages of a stronger memory and of stronger nerves. The 
single prerequisite of this would be — that the value of the first 
examination were noted, preserved, and added to the value of the 
second. 

The sixth advantage — is, that the Examination might be ren- 
dered at once far more accurate and far more easy. A large 
proportion of the candidates would give up the same book. To 
these, called into the " schools" together, a series of questions 
prepared and printed for the occasion, might be proposed; and 
the (unassisted) answers returned in writing before leaving the 
room. These answers being perused by the Examiners, each 
paper could be rated at its value, and that value placed to the 
credit of the candidate. In this manner the trial would in a 
great measure be easily and accurately gone through. (There 
is no reason, it may be observed, why the examination of candi- 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 751 

dates should be completed in consecutive days ; nor need an ex- 
amination in writing supersede any oral questioning.) 

Such a standard, as these last five advantages suppose to he 
accurately instituted and accurately applied, Oxford does not 
attempt ; hut leaves it to each of her transient Examiners to ex- 
temporize a criterion for himself, or rather to classify candidates 
as he may, according to his individual lights, and temporary 
impressions. That Universities in general do nothing more, is 
an invalid answer. For the Universities, in which the Profes- 
sorial or unrestricted system of instruction prevails, can at best 
only lavish degrees according to a rude appraisement ; and are 
wholly unable (what indeed they right rarely attempt) to classify 
candidates, even in the vaguest or most capricious manner. Ox- 
ford, therefore, in adopting the Tutorial or restricted system of 
instruction, should, in tolerating its peculiar disadvantages, be 
able to turn its peculiar advantages to account. — But to conclude : 
I am therefore, convinced, that it would be no ordinary improve- 
ment on the late Oxford Examination Statute, if, prospectively, 
a regulation were adopted, in principle at least, to the following 
' effect : 

Two several Orders of Study to be requisite for examination 
toward a degree in Arts ; and in these the gradations of profi- 
ciency to be rewarded by two several Orders of academical Honor. 

The First or superior order to have two Departments, to wit, 
Humane Letters and Philosophy. Certain lowest competencies, 
in both of these, to be necessary for a degree ; while, in each (as 
now), a higher proficiency to merit the honor of a corresponding 
class, if not, moreover (by a more accurate arrangement), indivi- 
dual rank among the candidates similarly classified. The Classes 
of Honor, as hitherto, may, in each department, be three or four. 

The Second or inferior order may comprehend an indefinite 
number of departments — departments at least which it is not 
here necessary to specify. From the candidate (as in the pro- 
spective statute), should be required a minimum in one depart- 
ment, if not in more, which, however, may be chosen by himself; 
and the honor of a corresponding class to be assigned, as at pres- 
ent, to every higher proficiency in the several departments. 

Care, however, should be taken, to mark, and that obtrusively, 
the difference between the honors belonging to the Orders of the 
absolutely necessary, and of the partially optional, studies. This 
might be done, by maintaining the two order:? and their exam- 



752 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

inations sufficiently distinct, by the following or other differences 
(the two first of which are employed, but that inadequately, in 
the recent Statute): 1°, Distinction of Time; the higher order 
preceding the lower, as its condition. 2°, Distinction of Exam- 
iners ; different individuals being, for each order, appointed to 
this function. 3°, Distinction of Object Matter; no department 
of the prior order being repeated in the posterior. 4°, Distinction 
of Name ; the one order being called, by Primary, the other by 
Secondary, or some such discriminative appellation. 

Before the examination of the Primary Order can be undergone, 
three full courses, three Academical Years (p. 735), to be com- 
pleted ; and this examination, for honors at least, must be taken 
within a year thereafter. The examination of the Secondary 
Order, at least for, honors, should in like manner be limited to a 
certain period. 

As enacted by the new Statute, the names of all, whether 
honored or not, to be published under the department in which 
they pass. 

Taking, finally, a general retrospect of the preceding scheme 
of academical education, this is seen to comprise various utilities." 

It would restore the University. It would bring back academ- 
ical education to its true and ancient significance; reconnecting 
the Houses and their private instruction with the University and 
its public discipline. 

It loses none of the advantages in the present domestic or 
tutorial system, but would correct the manifold imperfections of 
that system, as actually applied. For it would determine a far 
higher efficiency ; making, at the same time, that efficiency se- 
cure and general ; whereas the lower efficiency, as at present 
furnished, is not only contingent, but rare, not only limited, but 
confined to a few. As things now are, one House may be an 
instrument of education, comparatively real ; and others, such 
instruments only in name ; nay, even in the same House, study 
may be in vigorous activity at one time, at another in supine 
inertion. But this scheme, if realized, would allow — no House 
to fall educationally asleep — no Head to gratify his personal 
preferences at the expense of his official obligations — no incom- 
petent Tutor to hide his obstructive nullity in the obscurity of 
Hall or College. For, while it would elevate the Tutor from a 
private into a public instructor ; in raising his dignity and emolu- 
ment, it would raise also his qualifications, usefulness, and duties. 



OXFORD AS IT MIGHT BE. 753 

It commits in a beneficial contest (" wyadrj S' e/w tfSe fipoToiac") 
House with House, Tutor with Tutor, Pupil with Pupil; applies 
equably the stimulus of emulation to all, from the commence- 
ment of the academical curriculum until its termination. It 
open*, in fact, a new field of exercise and excitation ; leaving no 
one to inertion, be he teacher or be he taught, but goading each 
unceasingly to the best — according to his kind of duty, and in 
proportion to the measure of his powers. 

Restoring, it would constrain the University : — to employ its 
instructors in the most edifying ways ; — to propose, not what can 
most conveniently be taught, but the best objects, in the best 
order, and in the best books ; — to measure accurately the amount 
of energetic talent usefully employed ; — and to reward this, by 
proportionate and appropriate distinction. 

Far, therefore, from superseding the Examination for a Degree, 
it would prepare the candidate, subjectively and objectively, to 
undergo it ; enabling him to remedy his defects, and rendering 
it a more effectual and certain test of his proficiency. 

I should now proceed to the consideration of — 

b) Things secondary or supplemental. But matters principal 
have extended to such a length, that I must not enter upon others 
which, though of importance only as conditions of the former, 
could not possibly be discussed within a narrower compass. — Of 
these there are two, more especially meriting attention, but to 
which I can only allude. 

The first— is a scheme of academical Patronage and Regula- 
tion, accommodated to the circumstances of the English Univer- 
sities, more proximately of Oxford. And here, beside the subject 
in its more essential relations, it would be requisite to consider 
the impediments which an improved regulation of these schools 
would inevitably encounter from parties — in the Universities 
themselves — in the Church and its patrons — in the Government 
for the time— and in various influential interests throughout the 
nation ; impediments so great and numerous, that we may regard 
almost as chimerical the hope of seeing these institutions raised 
to the perfection, implied in a due accomplishment of the great 
ends for which they were established. In fact, my suggested 
plan of improvement for Oxford, was partly founded on a con- 
viction, that a tutorial instruction depends less, for its efficiency, 
on the virtues of an academical superintendence and appointment, 
than does a professorial. (On these virtues see pp. 345-382.) 

3B 



754 APPENDIX III. EDUCATIONAL. (C.) 

The second — is a scheme for the erection of new Halls. This 
would be a return, in part, to the ancient custom of the Univer- 
sity ; and must inevitably take place, were an increased resort 
of students determined to Oxford — unless, what we need not 
contemplate, domestic superintendence should here (as in Cam- 
bridge), be relaxed, for the pecuniary interest of the existing 
Houses. New Halls should be erected : — 1°, to supply additional 
demand for entrance ; 2°, to prevent or remedy a slovenly tuition 
in the older Houses ; 3°, to keep down (independently of more 
direct measures) the expense of the Colleges, and to afford a 
cheaper education to the poorer students ; 4°, to accommodate 
dissenters, were they, without a surrender of their principles, 
admitted for education to these national seminaries (pp. 467, sq., 
510, sq.) ; and 5°, to remunerate, in their Headships especially, 
academical zeal and ability. — Of course the new Halls should be 
of a better constitution than the old. 

The other measures under this head, as — a general taxation 
of the necessary collegial expenses — the means of remunerating 
the academical instructors — of retaining talent in the University 
— and of pensioning emeriti — libraries — musea, &c. ; these, how- 
ever important, I can at present only name. 



INDEX. 



Absolute, the : (see Unconditioned) ; 
meanings of term, 20 ; as contrasted, 
and as convertible, with Infinite, 20 ; 
used by Cardinal Cusa, 594 ; Absolute 
Identity, 60. 

A, E, I, O, (the logical symbols), of Latin 
origin, 129 ; and taken from the first 
two vowels of Afnrmo, and the first and 
second of Nego, 619. 

Agrippa (Cornelius), his counsel touching 
a reform of the University of Cologne, 
452. 

Aldrich (Dean), his Logic© Compendium, 
126, 139, 140, 143, 149, 150, 168, 732. 

Algebra. See Mathematics. 

Alphabet of Thought, Table of, &c, 567, 
sq. 

Vltdorf, University of. 371, 477. 

Apocalypse, opinions regarding its canon- 
icity, 496. 

Archytas, the treatise on the Categories 
under his name a forgery, 140. 

Aristotle : his Categories exclude the Un- 
conditioned, 32 ; not borrowed, 140 ; 
metaphysical, 141 ; his merits in regard 
to Logic, ib. ; his logical system not 
perfect, 142 ; text in his Ethics emend- 
ed, 268 ; apparently anticipates the 
doctrine of the Conditioned, 592 ; char- 
acter of his writings, 698 ; on necessity 
of philosophical study, 710 ; quoted 
passim. 

Assurance, Special Faith, &c, in earlier 
Protestantism, the condition and crite- 
rion of a true Faith, now generally sur- 
rendered, 486 ; held by English and 
Irish Churches, but not by their Church- 
men, 486 ; this return toward Cathol- 
icism unnoticed, 486, 487. 

Augustin (Saint), his conciliation of free 
grace and free will, 588 ; quoted passim. 

Austin (Mrs.), 526. 



Bacon (Lord) : quoted, as to professorial 
endowments, 708 ; as to the compara- 
tive facility of the inductive and phys- 
ical sciences, 744 ; et alibi passim. 



Balfour (Robert), his character as a phil- 
osopher and logician, 122. 

Balliol College, Oxford, its academical 
eminence, 677, sq. 

Barbara, Celarent, &c, of Latin original, 
and not borrowed from the Greek ; 
probably by Petrus Hispanus, 129. 

Barbarism of mind, and a knowledge of 
facts, compatible, 46-48, 705. 

Baynes (Mr. Thomas Spencer), 163. 

Benson (Mr. Robert), Memoirs of Collier, 
189. 

Berkeley (Bishop), an unknown treatise 
by, 186. 

Bernard (Saint), his conciliation of free 
grace and free will, 589 ; quoted pluries. 

Blemmidas, his Greek words for mood 
and figure taken from the Latin Bar- 
bara, Celarent, &c, 129. See 619. 

Boerhaave (Herrmann), 254. 

Boole (Prof), 273. 

Bossuet's accuracy vindicated, 486. 

Breadth and Depth of notions. See Logic. 

Broun (Mr. James), 121. 

Brown (Dr. Thomas), his philosophy of 
Perception, 49-102 ; his series of mis- 
takes, ib. ; results of his doctrine, 100; 
his doctrine of Causality, 576, 580. 

Bucer (Martin), his character, 491. 

Bursa, the name by which an authorized 
House for the habitation and superin- 
tendence of academical scholars was 
called in Germany, 404-406. 

Buschius (Hermannus). See Epistolae 
o. v. 

Butler (Samuel) quoted, on the necessity 
of philosophizing, 710 ; on the fact of 
consciousness. 69. 



Cajetan (Cardinal), his doctrine in regard 
to the conciliation of prevision, pre- 
destination, and free will, 589. 

Calvinism, current representation of, er- 
roneous, 590. 

Cambridge University : its forced study 
of Mathematics unimproving to the 
mind, and conducing to idiocy, mad- 



756 



INDEX. 



ness, death, 308, 324, 638, sq. ; why so 
deleterious an exaggeration there main- 
tained, 320 ; its Colleges about the last 
seminaries in Europe in which the 
Newtonian physics superseded the Car- 
tesian, and why ! 308, 321 ; its present 
study of mathematics condemned by 
Newton, 305 ; absurdity of the recent 
Examination Graces, 744 ; its Divines 
the precursors of the German Rational- 
ists and their followers, 498, 499. 

Camerarius (Gulielmus), his character as 
a philosopher and logician, 124. 

Canvassing of academical patrons, 372, 
643. 

Cartes (Des) : his employment of the 
word Idea, and his doctrine of Percep- 
tion, 75, 77, sq. ; the first of math- 
ematicians, he despised and renounced 
mathematics, 271, sq. ; which he soon 
even wholly forgot, 283 ; called his 
philosophy a Romance, 295. 

Categorical. See Logic. 

Categories : Aristotelic, 32, 141 ; of 
Thought — by Kant, 23, 34 — by Cousin, 
16— by Author, 24, 567, sq. 

Catholic Italian Universities, their re- 
ligious liberality. 356, 360, 362. 

Causality, notion of: its origin, 575, sq. ; 
relation of, ipso facto, thought as con- 
ditioned, 40, 41 ; conspectus of the 
various theories for its explanation, 
575, sq. ; explained by a new theory, 
that of the Conditioned, 581, sq. ; 
moral and religious character of this 
theory, 5S5, sq. 

Causes, always more than one, 575, 584, 
alibi. 

Chevallier (Professor), 257. 

Churches of Germany, England, and Scot- 
land, their character, 332-340. 

Church History best or worst of disci- 
plines, 494. 

Churchmen, English and Scottish, in 
different ways, have a bad professional 
education, 332—338, sq. ; and the worst 
possible test of competency, 338. 

Classical learning, its conditions, 325- 
343; 1°. a classical training required 
for the three learned professions, 326, 
Law 328, Medicine 330, Theology 330- 
337 ; 2°. efficiency of schools and uni- 
versities, 326, 337-340. 

Collier (Arthur), his Idealism, 185-201 ; 
his life, 190. 

Collins (Anthony), unknown treatise by, 
186. 

Common Sense, 69, 90, 94, 195. 



Comprehension and Extension of notions. 
Sec Logic. 

Conception. We can conceive or think 
(have a notion or concept of) what we 
are unable to imagine or represent, 20; 
but what we represent or imagine, that 
we may think or conceive, ib. 

Concepts, Notions. See Logic. 

Conditioned (the), philosophy of, 19, sq., 
567, sq. ; converse of the philosophy 
of the Unconditioned, 574 ; probably 
adopted by Aristotle, 592 ; science of 
ignorance, 574 ; explains Causality, 
&c, 581, sq., eminently religious, 22, 
587, sq., 591, sq. 

Conditions of Thought, table and detail 
of, 567-573. 

Consciousness : only of the limited, 26 ; 
not a special faculty, 53 ; facts of, 69, 
90 ; involves judgment, 573, sq. ; Aris- 
totle and the older Greeks, with the 
Romans, until the Latin language 
ceased to be a living tongue, employed 
(with rare exceptions) no psychological 
term for Consciousness, 57, 115. 

Conversation with the learned, 702, sq. 

Coplestone (Bishop), his confusion of the 
Colleges with the University of Oxford, 

395, 501 ; various testimonies by, 395, 

396, 428, 670, 718. 

Cosmothetic Idealism, or Hypothetical 
Realism, or Hypothetical Dualism, 62, 
192. 

Coste (Pierre), his explanation of Locke's 
passage touching the creation of mat- 
ter, 200. 

Cousin : his genius and character, 9, 43, 
48 ; his philosophy in general, 9-44 ; 
advocate of Rationalism, 14 ; his doc- 
trine of the Infinito-Absolute, 30 ; his 
report on Prussian Schools, 526-563 ; 
his merits as a reformer and promoter 
of Popular Education, 531, 532 ; what 
he has done for France can not be 
without benefit for this and other coun- 
tries, 532 ; his observations on the law 
in France for the instruction of the 
people, 557-562. 

Craniology fundamentally false, 600. 

Croke (Richard), 208. 

Crotus (Rubianus). Sec Epistolje o. v. 

Cudworth (Dr. Ralph), an unknown treat- 
ise by, 186 ; on, 302. 

Cullen (Dr. William), his character, 238- 
246. 

Cultivation of mind in no proportion to 
the mind's possession of facts, but in 
proportion to its energy, 47-49, 320. 



INDEX. 



757 



Curators : plan of academical Patronage 
and Government through them ; by 
Author, 379 ; by Burgh Commission- 
ers, 644. 

Cusa or Cusanus (Cardinal), his doctrine 
of Learned Ignorance, 594; from this 
have sprung the modern theories of the 
Absolute, 595 ; this Prince of the 
Church anticipated Copernicus and 
Galileo in the true theory of the Heav- 
ens, ib. 



Dalgarno (George), his writings, 174-184. 

Davidson (Dr. J. Henry). 654. 

Deaf and Dumb, history of the attempts 
at their education, 175-184; the testi- 
monies by, or in relation to, of Agricola 
(R.) 176, Aristotle 176, Bacon 179, 
Bonnet (P.) 177, Bulwer (J.) 180, Dal- 
garno 181, Digby (Sir K.) 177, Epee 
(Abbe de 1') 181, Fabricius ab Aqua- 
pendente 179, Galen 176, Holder 180, 
Lana 179, Molinffius (the jurist) 176, 
Montanus (P.) 179, Pontius (P.) 177, 
Robertson (Father) 180, Stewart (D.) 
181, Vallesius (F.) 177, Vives 177, 
Wallis 179. 

Degree or ' Intension, as a condition of 
thought, 573. 

De Morgan (Prof.) as a logical critic and 
reasoner, 609-639. 

Depth and Breadth of notions. See Logic. 

Des Cartes. Sec Cartes. 

Dialectic. See Logic. 

Disputation, as an exercise of mind, 696, 
sq. 

Dissenters. See Universities, English. 

Doce ut Discas, 342, 700, sq. 

Doubt, the condition of knowledge, 
591. 

Dousa (Janus) as Curator of Leyden, 
359, sq. 

Duncan (Mark), his character as a logi- 
cian, &c, 123, sq. 

Durham, " University" of, has no legal 
right to grant Degrees, 471, sq. 



ipso facto, as conditioned, 40, 41, 
575, sq. 

Empirical. See Experience. 

England : English indifference to philos- 
ophy, 186 ; abuse of the term Philos- 
ophy, 272, 610 ; national disregard of 
oaths, 449, 518 ; church the creation 
of the civil magistrate, nay of the King 
alone, 333, sq. ; established clergy have 
no professional education, 336, 436, 
470 ; English theology weak from want 
of philosophy, and could not now be 
trusted in the threatened polemic, 714. 
Universities (see Universities) ; popular 
education the worst in Christendom, 
530 ; Anglican Church holds Assur- 
ance, 486. 

Enthymeme. See Logic. 

Eobanus. See Hessus. 

Epistolse Obscurorum Virorum : character 
and authorship of this satire, 202-237 ; 
its authors three, 225 ; to wit, Hutten 
221, Crotus 221, and Buschius 225; 
theories of its authorship, 218 ; con- 
tributed greatly to the Reformation, 
213, 214; mistakes about, 217; ill- 
edited by Muench, 231, and by Roter- 
mund, 233. 

Eschenbach (Professor), his translation of 
Collier's Clavis, 189. 

Examination as an academical exercise, 
695, sq. 

Examinations for academical degrees : in 
Louvain, 663, sq. ; as academical stim- 
ulus, in Oxford, 718, 737. 

Exeter, Dr. Philpotts (Bishop of), on ad- 
mission of Dissenters to the English 
Universities, 500, sq. 

Existence, as a category of thought, 
568. 

Experience, all notions from or empirical, 
which we can think non-existent, 321, 
323, 573. 

Extension. See Space. 

Extension, and Intension or Comprehen- 
sion of notions. See Logic. 



Edinburgh, University of: its defects, 
338, 369-372, 381, 640-662; its De- 
grees in Arts, 646, sq. ; in Medicine, 
330, 352, 648, sq. ; how given now, 
658, sq. ; by what means these degrees 
might be restored to respectability, 662. 

Education of Deaf and Dumb. See Deaf 
and Dumb. 

Education of the People. See Popular 
Education. 

Effect and Cause, relation of, thought, 



Faculty of University, what, 475, et alibi. 

Faith, true or saving, formerly, in Prot- 
estantism, implied Assurance or Special 
Faith, 486. 

First and Second notions, distinction of, 
139. 

Formal and Material, distinction of. Set 
Logic. 

French Sensualist philosophy, 10. 

Fries, Astronomy and Fate, Psychology 
and Design, 202. 



758 



INDEX. 



Fromondus, his statement of a curious 
theory of perception, 56. 



Gatto (Sig. Lo), Italian translator of these 
Philosophical Discussions, passim. 

Gentlemen Commoners, in Oxford and 
Cambridge, a collegial emolument, but 
an academical nuisance, 735. 

Geometry. See Mathematics. 

Germans : character of, 202 ; rise of 
classical studies among, 204 ; their de- 
moralization after the Reformation, 489. 

German : rational philosophy, 12 ; uni- 
versities, 362-364, 403-405 ; the theol- 
ogy less orthodox than the philosophy, 
483 ; schools for the people, 538-563 ; 
strong interest in education, shown from 
the number of works on that subject 
published in Germany, 551. 

God known and unknown, 22 ; a certain 
analogy of Man to God, 26 ; to know 
God, we must know ourselves, 711. 

Goettingen, University of, 364. 

Graduates, all have a right to lecture pub- 
licly in the English Universities, 388, 
442, sq. 

Grotius (Hugo) follows the Scaligers in 
singing the wisdom of a Learned Igno- 
rance, 596. 



truth mistaken by Dr. Whewell, 266 ; 

despised mathematical study, 266, 304. 
Hutten (Ulrich v.) Sec Epistolse o. v. 
Hypostasis, term, 597. 
Hypothetical. See Logic. 
Hypothetical Realism, or H. Dualism, or 

Cosmothetic Idealism, 62, 192. 



Hampden (Bishop), his Aristotle's Phil- 
osophy, 169. 

Hare (Archdeacon) : his counter criti- 
cism, in defense of Luther, considered, 
484—597 ; his knowledge of theology 
and of Luther's writings, with the 
trustworthiness of his statements and 
translations, ib. ; his misapprehensions 
and misrepresentations of Bossuet, ib. ; 
ignorant even of Anglican principles, 
486, 487, 495 ; attempts to defend 
Luther only on a few points, and even 
on these few has uniformly failed, 496. 

Harris (Mr., of Salisbury), 713. 

Hegel : his doctrine of the Absolute, 28, 
30 ; to him the Absolute equal to the 
Nothing, 28 ; refutation of and by 
Schelling, 30 ; his confusion of Con- 
tradictories and Contraries, 31 ; on his 
philosophy, 595, 711. 

Hessus (Helius Eobanus) on, 228, 234 ; 
why called King 1 Sec Addenda. 

Hispanus (Petrus) not a Plagiarist, 129. 

Hoffmann (Frederic), 253 ; his Fuge 
Medicos, &c., 252. 

Huber (Professor), " The English Uni- 
versities," character of that book, 525. 

Hume, his opinion about mathematical 



Idea, or representative object, 63 ; history 
of the word, 75 ; what in the Cartesian 
philosophy, 77. 

Idealism, its various degrees or species, 
61, 191; grounds of, 193; why the 
Schoolmen, Mallebranche, and, in gen- 
eral, orthodox Catholics, avoided this 
doctrine, 196. 

Ignorantia Docta summa sapientia, 43, 
591-596. Testimonies quoted — Anony- 
mus, Arabian Sage, Aristotle, Amo- 
bius, Augustin, Chrysologus, Chrys- 
ostom, Cusa, Democritus, Grotius, 
Palin genius, Pascal, Petrarch, Piccol- 
omini (^Eneas Sylvius), Pliny, Rabbis, 
the Scaligers, Socrates, Tertullian, 
Theodoret, 592-597. See Knowledge, 
Occult Causes. 

Imagination. Sec Conception. 

Induction. Sec Logic. 

Infinite, the : (see Unconditioned) ; what 
properly, 21, 28 ; verses on, 44. 

Inglis (Sir Ptobert Harry, Bart.) on admis- 
sion of Dissenters to English Universi- 
ties, 500, sq. 

Intellectual Intuition, 14; of Schelling, 
27 ; in Cusa, 595. 

Intension, or Degree, as a condition of 
thought, 573. 

Intension and Extension of notions. 
See Logic. 

Intuitive (or Presentative) and Represent- 
ative Knowledge, 58, sq. 

Irish, their scholastic pugnacity, barbar- 
ism, and acuteness, 14. 

Italian Universities, their religious liber- 
ality in calling Protestants of learning 
to their chairs, 356, 360, 362. 



Jacobi, noble passage of, on Providence 

and Fate, 301. 
Jenkyns (Verv Rev. Dr.), as Master of 

Balliol, 678" 
Johnson (Rev. Arthur), translation of 

Tennemann's Manual, 103-119. 
Judgment involved in Consciousness, 



573, sq. 
Judgments. 



See Logic. 



Kant : his philosophy, 13 ; his doctrine 



INDEX. 



759 



of the Unconditioned, 22 ; his Categor- 
ies, 23, 34, 146 ; against Common 
Sense, 9T ; his Logical purism, 145 ; 
sublime passage from, contrasting the 
Moral Law and the Stellar Universe, 
300; on, 712. 
Knowledge : does it imply an analogy of 
Subject and Object ? 67; of Mind and 
of Matter is only phaenomenal or 
relative, 597. Testimonies for this 
relativity — Albertus Magnus, Aristotle, 
Averroes, Augustin, Bacon, Boetliius, 
Bruno, Campanella, Gerson, Kant, Leo 
Hebrseus, Melanchthon, Newton (Sir 
Isaac), Piccolomini (F.), Scaliger (J. 
C), Spinoza, 597-600. See Ignorantia 
Docta, Occult Causes. 



Lambert, his Syllogistic, 636. 

Law, how far its study supposes classical 
scholarship, 328, sq. ; proposed Prac- 
ticum for, 698. 

Lening (John), his character, 490, 491. 

Leyden, University of, 356-362. 

Liberty moral, doctrine of, 585, sq. 

Locke, his advice to William III. to re- 
form the Universities, 452 ; on, 200. 
See Perception. 

Logic : its fortune in Scotland, 121 ; in 
Oxford, 124; in Cambridge, ' 123 ; in 
Dublin, 124; History of, 140; what? 
131 ; its derivation, 137 ; Abstract, 
Concrete, 136 ; a Formal science, 137, 
138, 139, 145 ; Pure and Applied, 141, 
alibi. 

Notions, Simple Terms. — First and 
Second Notions, 139. Categories of 
Aristotle, not a logical distribution, 
141. Breadth or Extension, and Depth 
or Intension or Comprehension, 171, 
sq., 628, sq., Table of, 631. 

Judgments, Propositions. — Eight 
forms of, 162, 619, sq. Quantification 
of the Predicate, 161, 162, 627. Com- 
prehension or Depth, and Extension or 
Breadth, 628, sq. ; remarkable omission 
of this distinction, 172. Affirmation 
and Negation, counter procedure of, 
612, sq., 631 ; their Particularity two- 
fold, 623, sq. Tables of their rela- 
tions, 620, 625. 

Reasonings, Syllogisms. — All logical 
inference hypothetical, 140 ; but all 
mediate inference categorical, 603, 607 ; 
our Hypothetical syllogisms not those 
of Aristotle, 150 ; Categorical, what 
the different meanings of the term, 152 ; 
Analytical and Synthetical, what ? 604, 



sq. ; Objection of Petitio Principii does 
not apply to the Analytical Syllogism, 
therefore not to any, 604 ; Figured and 
Unfigured, what? 604, sq. ; Argument, 
what properly, 148 ; Ultratotal Quan- 
tification of the middle term, 636 ; 
Order of Premises, 632 ; Enthymeme, 
what vulgarly, and what to Aristotle, 
&c, 153, sq. ; Deduction, logical, 160, 
sq. ; Induction, logical, its true nature, 
157-173 ; author's one Canon of Syl- 
logism, 603, 605 ; this thoroughgoing, 
without exceptions, 607, 618. 

Propositions and Syllogisms. — Mod- 
ality of, Extra-logical, or only of an 
Applied Logic, 141,, 145, 158, 634, 
sq. ; what allowable* 148, 634 ; Hy- 
pothetical propositions and syllogisms, 
what and how to be divided, 150 ; 
Quantification of the Predicate in pro- 
positions and syllogisms, 161, 162, 627, 
sq. ; on this, as the foundation of a 
new Analytic, 602-608 ; Notations, 
logical, 606, 608, 620 ; should, if com- 
petent, be able to exhibit the thirty-sis 
moods, by thirty-six several diagrams, 
608. 

Authors quoted in reference to 
Logic, apart from those reviewed : — 
Agricola 154, Aldrich 140, 143, Alex- 
ander 156, Ammonius 156, Apuleiua 

153, Aristo Chius 127, Aristotle 135, 
138, 142, 146, 151, 153, 162, 170, 
171, 172, Averroes 135, Bacon 144, 
Balfour (Robert) 122, Boethius 150, 
151, Browne (Sir Thomas) 158, Buf- 
fier 134, Cardanus 152, Chalmers or 
Camerarius (William) 123, Corydaleus 

154, Cusa (Cardinal) 128, Dempster 
(Thomas) 123, Duncan (Mark) 123, 
134, Du h 'leix 122, Erasmus 121, Fac- 
ciolati 155, 156, Gillies 145, Kirwan 
134, Leibnitz 121, Lovanienses 153, 
Magentinus 156, Majoragius 154, Man- 
sel 148, Pachymeres 156, Pacius 155, 
Philoponus 155, Phrissemius 154, 155, 
Rabbis 141, Ramus 147, 149 v Saint 
Hilaire 142, 147, 151, Scaliger (Joseph) 
121, Scaynus 154, Servetus 121, Sex- 
tus Empiricus 155, Urquhart (Sir 
Thomas) 122, Valla 147, Vives 134, 
147, Vossius (J. G.) 152. — Authorsonly 
referred to, omitted. 

Louvain, University of, 371, 402, 409, 
477 ; its Examinations, 665, sq. 

Luther : some obnoxious opinions of, 
484-496 ; a mistake in the report of 
his Table-Talk corrected, touching Ec- 



760 



INDEX. 



clesiastcs, 492 ; his rejection of the 
book of Esther established, 493, 494 ; 
also his rejection of the Epistle of St. 
James, 495 ; favorable to Polygamy, 
&c, 489-492 ; held (originally at least) 
a heterodox opinion in regard to the 
necessity of human action, 486. 



Maimonides (Moses), quoted touching 
Esther, 494. 

Mallebranche, or Malebranche, his vision 
of all things in God, whence borrowed, 
198. 

ManiliuSj verses of, 26. 

Mansel (Rev. H. L.), 129, 323, 732. 

Matter and Material used not in the sense 
of body and bodily, but for that circa 
quod, in quo, and ex quo, 13, 138, 146. 

Material and Formal, distinction of. See 
Logic. 

Materialism, 61. 

Mathematics, study of: what its utility 
as an exercise of mind, 257-324 ; does 
not educate to a general evolution of 
the faculties ; but, if too exclusively 
pursued, contracts and debilitates the 
mind, 267-312, 638, sq. ; not a logical 
exercise, 318, sq., 609, sq. ; only dif- 
ficult because too easy, 281 ; inclines 
to credulity and scepticism, 294 ; to 
the former, 294-298; to the latter, 
298-302 ; generally of little use, and 
soon forgotten, 311; relation of to 
Logic, 262 ; Geometric process culti- 
vates the imagination, not the under- 
standing, 276 ; may possibly conduce 
to continuous attention, 302-307 ; but 
other studies better for this, 309 ; 
Algebraic process, in particular, posi- 
tively deleterious as a mental gym- 
nastic, 304-319. — Authorities and in- 
stances adduced : — Albertus Magnus 

276, D'Alembert 271, 282, 288, St. 
Ambrose 299, Ammonius Hermise 276, 
Arcesilaus 282. Aristo Chius 282, 
Aristotle 265, 267, 274, 278, 280, 284, 
311, Arnauld 279, St. Austin 299, 
Bacon (Lord) 303, Bacon (Roger) 277, 
282, Baillet (Adrian) 271, Barbeyrac 
291, Basedow 292, Bayle 282, 299, 
Berkeley 287, 299, Bernhardi 268, 
Boole 273, Buddeus 291, Cicero 280, 
Clarendon 290, Le Clerc 291, Coleridge 
278, Colerus 281, Condillac 296, Daries 
281, Descartes 271, 281, Digby (Sir K.) 

277, Feldenus 291, Fdnseca 279, Frac- 
astorius 276, Fries 302, Gassendi 290, 
Gibbon 292. Goethe 270, S'Gravesande 



287, Gregory (Dr. John) 299, Gundlmg 
299, Du Hatnel 278, 303, 310, Hippon- 
icus 282. Horrebovius 281, Huet 281, 
Hume 266, 304, Huygens 279, Jacobi 
301, St. Jerome 299, Kant 277, 300, 
Kepler 296, Kirwan 293, 309, Klumpp 
270, 281, Leibnitz 279, Leicester 290, 
Leslie (Sir John) 266, Lichtenberg 281, 

288, Monboddo 300, Morgenstern 269, 
Newton (Sir Isaac) 296, 305, Niemeyer 
281, Pascal 286, Pemberton 305, Phil- 
oponus 276, Picus (Joannes) 296, Plato 
265, 303, 311, Poiret 296, 299, Proclus 
265, Proverbs 282, Prussia (Queen of) 
296, Quarterly Review 308, Salat 294, 
Scaliger (Joseph) 282, Scaiiger (Julius 
Csesar) 601, Seneca 265, 311, Socrates 
311, Sorbiere 290, De Stael 293, 297, 
301, 309, Stewart (Dugald) 286, 295, 
298, 304, Thiersch 306, Vico 306, Vives 
290, Voltaire 295, Walpole (Horace) 
293, Warburton 281, 291, 297, 303, 
Weidler 281, Von Weiller 269, Whiston 
296, Wolf (Chr.) 281, Wolf (The Phil- 
ologer) 283, Xenophon 310, Zwinger 
281. — Reasoning of mathematicians out 
of mathematics, examples of, 314—324, 
609-639. Sec also 740-745. 

Medical Degrees. See Edinburgh. 

Medicine : on the revolutions of, 246— 
256 ; doubtful whether a blessing or a 
curse, 252 ; how far it supposes schol- 
arship, 330, 654, sq. ; contemned by 
physicians, 252, 656 ; profession of 
physician in this country now requires 
no liberal learning, 659, sq. 

Meiners, his testimony touching academ- 
ical patronage, 366 ; quoted, 696. 

Melanchthon, quoted : on Examinations, 
696 ; et alibi pluries. 

Melander (Dionysius), his character, 490. 

Memory, 55. 

Metaphysics. See Philosophy. 

Michaelis, bis testimony regarding aca- 
demical patronage, 365. 

Miller (Sergeant), his testimony, 442, 452, 
516. 

Modality, a material affection of the pre- 
dicate (or subject) to be excluded from 
Pure Logic. 141, sq., 145, sq., 634, sq. 

Morgan. See De Morgan. 

Muenchhausen (Baron V.) as Curator of 
Goettingen, 364, sq. 



Natural Realism or Dualism, 61. 
Necessitas Consequential et necessitas 

Consequents, or Formal and Material 

(or Real) Necessity, 146. 



INDEX. 



761 



Necessity moral, doctrine of, 391, sq. 

Newton (Sir Isaac) : his unknown theory 
of the creation of Matter, 200 ; educa- 
tionally condemned the algebraic pro- 
cess, 305 ; a religious dreamer, 296. 

Nihilism, 61. 

Non-Natural Subscription, 513. 

Notations, syllogistic. See Logic. 

Nothing, the, = the Absolute, by what 
Absolutists maintained, 28, 594 ; in 
reference to this doctrine, 574, 594, 711. 

Notions or Concepts. See Logic. 



Oath and Subscription held of light ac- 
count in England, 449. 

Object. See Subject. 

Occult Causes should be recognized, 600. 
Testimonies for this — Alstedius, Scal- 
iger (J. C), Voltaire, 601. See Un- 
conditioned ; Knowledge ; Ignorantia 
Docta. 

Oken, his doctrine of the Absolute, or the 
Nothing, 28. 

Oxford : legal and illegal, 386, sq., 436, 
440, 687 ; that University still main- 
tains the principle of encouraging solid 
erudition, 340 ; therefore with its mighty 
means the most capable of being raised 
to the highest, 340, 384 ; Testimonies 
to its former abject state, 420, 685 ; 
Table of its Houses in the order of their 
efficiency as educational organs, 672, 
673 ; these Houses so compared, 671- 
684, 715 ; as it is, 669, sq. ; as it 
might be, 688, sq. ; Examination Stat- 
utes. See Universities English.- 



Padua, University of, 354. 

Paris, University of, 400-402. 

Parr (Rev. Dr.), his reprint of Collier, 
&c, 186. 

Pascal, passage of, explained, 596. 

Patronage of Universities. See Univers- 
ity Patronage. 

Peacock (Dean), his testimony, 415, 525. 

Pearson (George, B.D., Christian Advo- 
cate of Cambridge), his objections to 
the admission of Dissenters into the En- 
glish Universities considered, 479, sq. ; 
his knowledge of German Theology, ib. 



Amauld 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, Bacon 48, 
53, Berkeley 96, Brucker 88, Buchanan 
(David) 75, Clarke (Dr. Samuel) 86, 
88, Le Clerc 85, 86, Cousin 85, Crou- 
saz 88, Descartes 77, 96, Digby (Sir 
Kenelm) 86, Durandus 59, Fichte 97, 
De la Forge 77, Fromondus 57, Geno- 
vesi 85, 88, Goclenius 75, S'Grave- 
sande 88, Hesiod 90, Hobbes 79, Hook 
85, Hume 96, Jacobi 97, Kant 89, 97, 
Leibnitz 59, 74, 82, 87, 89,.Le6sing 46, 
Locke 83, 84, Lucretius 69, 76, 90, 
Mallebranche or Malebranche 78, 87, 
96, Melanchthon 75, Michael Ephesius 
57, Nemesius 57, Newton (Sir Isaac) 
85, Norris 67, Philoponus 57, Plato 46, 
57, Plotinus 88, Plutarchus Athenien- 
sis 57, Roel 79, Royer-Collard 78, 88, 
Scaliger (Julius Csesar) 48, 75, Schel- 
ling 96, Sergeant 85, Simplicius 57, 
Tennemann 96, Tertullian 54, Them- 
istius 57, Thomasius (Christian) 88, 
Tucker 85, Voltaire 89, De Vries 79, 
Willis 85, Wolf 78, 82,»89. 

Perjury, testimonies touching, of Au- 
gustin and Tillotson, 448, 449 ; of San- 
derson and Berkeley, 518. 

Philip, the Magnanimous, Landgrave of 
Hesse, his polygamy, 489-492. 

Philosophy: what, 13, 21 ; what it means 
in Britain, 272, 610 ; notices of its for- 
tune in Germany, 12 ; in France, 10, 45 ; 
in Scotland, 11 ; study of, its utility, 46 ; 
even to be refuted, must be studied, 
710 ; man philosophizes, as he thinks, 
710 ; a philosophy of man prerequisite 
to a philosophy of God, 71 1 ; self-knowl- 
edge, the doctrine of humility, 71 1. See 
Conditioned. Six schemes of, — Natu- 
ral Realism, Absolute Identity, Idealism, 
Materialism, Nihilism, Cosmothetic Ide- 
alism, 61, also 191, sq. ; terms Philos- 
ophy and Philosophical, applied in 
England, and especially in Cambridge, 
to physical and mathematical science, 
185, 272, 309, 319, 610. 

Physic contemned by Physicians, 252. 

Physical study less improving to the 
mind, 47, 705 ; Bacon's testimony to 
this, 705, 744 ; tends to irreligion, 300, 
sq., et alibi. 



Peisse (M.), the able French translator 

of these Philosophical Discussions, his ! Pillans (Prof), defense of classical in 
notes, passim. struction, 325, 340, 343 

Perception: philosophy of, 56-102; dif- | Pisa, University of, 355 



ferent meanings of the term, 81 ; testi- 
monies quoted touching (beside Reid 
and Brown), — Alexander Aphrodisi- 
ensis 57, Aristotle 47, 57, 75. 94, 



Plato, inscription over his school — (" Let 
no one ignorant of geometry here 
enter"), a comparatively modern fiction, 
271, 310. 



3B* 



762 



INDEX. 



Ploucquot, his Canon of Syllogism, 618, 
636. 

Polygamy permissible, an original doctrine 
of the Lutheran Reformers, 489-493. 

Pope (Alexander), illustrated, 595. 

Popular Education, now determined in 
England by the Reform Bill, 526-530 ; 
its progress in France, 531-533 ; should 
be made obligatory in this country as i-n 
Germany, 539 ; seminaries in Germany 
for the training of schoolmasters (Nor- 
mal schools), 547-552 ; in Prussia, 
534-563. 

Prescntathe (or Intuitive) and Represent- 
ative knowledge, 58, sq. 

Price (Mr. Bonamy), 730. 

Proctors, Oxford, were allowed the salaries 
of the professorships, which they co- 
operated in illegally suppressing, 440, sq. 

Professorial and Tutorial Systems com- 
pared, 726, sq. 

Professorial Examination for Degrees 
always worthless, if exclusive, 645- 
662, 745. . 

Proposition. See Logic. 

Protension. See Time. 

Prussian popular education, 533-563. 

Psellus (Michael the younger), not the 
author of the Synopsis Organi, 129. 

Psychology, only a developed conscious- 
ness, 53. See Philosophy. 

Pythagorean philosophers ; the frag- 
ments and treatises under their name, 
all spurious, 140. 



Representative knowledge, 58, 63. 

Reuchlin : his character, 210; his rela- 
tion to the Epistolffi Obscurorum Vir- 
orum, 211 ; an unedited letter by, 234 ; 
on this letter, 235, sq. 

Royer-Collard, his character, 12. 

Rubianus (Crotus). See Epistolae o. v 

Ruhnkenius, 712. 



Qualities of Matter, Primary, Secundo- 
primary, and Secondary, 61, 88. 



Rationalism (properly Intellectual sm), 
12 ; as a scheme of philosophy, to Kant 
a mere delusion, 13. 

Ravaisson (M.), 592. 

Reason and Consequent, law of, to be ex- 
cluded from Logic, 159, alibi ; is only 
in Logic an evolution of the law of 
Non-Contradiction, ib. 

Regent and Non-regent (terms not un- 
derstood in the English Universities), 
explained, 389, 442. 

Reid, his doctrine of Perception, 31-102. 

(General), his trust, 381, 660. 

Relativity, the principal Condition of 
thinking, 569, sq. 

R.emi (Abraham), a verse of, 13. 

Repetition, as an exercise, 698, sq. 

Representation, properly, only of what 
can be actually and adequately imag- 
ined. See Cohcention. 



Saint Hilaire (M. Barthelemy), 142, 147, 
151. 

Sanderson (Bishop), his Logical Com- 
pendium, 126 ; quoted, 703. 

Scaliger (Joseph Justus) : his paramount 
learning, 282, 360, alibi ; his verses on 
the text of his father, touching the lim- 
itation of our knowledge, 596. 

(Julius Cesar) : an Oxonian, 432 ; 

on the wisdom of voluntary ignorance, 
&c.,43, 596, 601 ; on disputation, 698. 

Scepticism, what, 91. 

Schelling, his doctrine of the Uncondi- 
tioned, 26 ; refutation of and by Cousin 
and Hegel, 30. 

Schleiermacher on academical patronage, 
368; quoted, 716. 

Schoolmen, ignorantly despised, 144 

Schools, Scottish Grammar Schools . 
greatly too few, and the Universities 
thus brought to attempt their supply, 
in vain, 337, sq. ; the bad organization 
of their classes, 342. 

Scots, their character for philosophical 
and general talent, 121, 122, 375, sq. 

Scottish : — Philosophy, 1 1 ; Theology has 
for two centuries been null, 332-336, 
376 ; Church, its attempts to import 
from Holland learned divines, 335, its 
Veto Act, 336 ; Grammar Schools, de 
ficient in numbers, 338 ; defects of their 
classes, 341 ; Law, 329 ; Medicine, 330 ; 
Scholarship and classical training, 337— 
340, 376, 377 ; Universities, 368-381 ; 
Popular Education, as inferior to that 
of Germany, as superior to that of En- 
gland. Sec Schools. 

Self and Not-self, as a condition of 
thought, 569. 

Self-activity, at once the mean and the 
end of education, indeed, of all knowl- 
edge, 46, sq., 693, sq., 698, sq., alibi. 

Seneca, quoted 692, 702, et passim. 

Sewell (Rev. Mr.) 715. 

Social study, 703. 

Space, or Extension, known only as con- 
ditioned, 35, 36 ; as a condition of 
thought, 572. 

Stahl (George Enrest), 250. 



INDEX. 



763 



Stewart (Dugald), 146, 181, 189, 194, 288, 
294, 297, 304. 

Strauss, the Hegelian divine, 711. 

Subject, Subjective, and Object, Object- 
ive ; meaning of terms, 13; as a condi- 
tion of thought, 569, 570 ; distinction 
very vague and vacillating, 13, 570. 

Subscription to articles of faith, its obliga- 
tion frustrated by the English Universi- 
ties, 449, 512. 513. 

Substance and Phenomenon : ipso facto, 
conditioned, 36 : as a condition of 
thought, 570 ; meaning of term, 597. 

Syllogism. See Logic. 



Teaching, as an exercise toward learn- 
ing, 342, 700, sq. 

Tennemann, translation of his Manual by 
Johnson, 103-119. 

Terms. See Logic. 

Tests, religious. See Universities, En- 
glish, and Subscription. 

Theology : supposes scholarship, 330, sq., 
376, sq. ; Scottish, long therefore null, 
332, sq., 376 ; not independent of phil- 
osophy ; English, therefore, has been 
long very feeble, 714. 

Thinking. See Thought. 

Tholosanus, his testimony as to meaning 
of University, 475. 

Thomson (Prof. John), his character and 
life of Cullen, 240-256. 

— (Rev. William), 129, 163, 619, 

620. 

Thought, Positive and Negative, 568 ; 
Conditions of positive thought, 567, 
sq. ; to think is to condition, 143. 

Time, or Pretension, or Duration, known 
only as conditioned, 35, 36 ; as a con- 
dition of thought, 571. 

Truth, speculative, an end, not ultimate, 
but subordinate to the cultivation of 
mind by its speculation, 46-49. 

Tutor, in Oxford, the office of, by statute 
open to all graduates, even to Bachelors 
of Arts, 392, 413 ; nor need the Tutor 
and Pupil be of the same House, 460 ; 
Table of Tutorial eminence throughout 
the Oxford Houses, 673 ; Tutorial and 
Professorial systems compared, 725- 
730 ; condition of Tutor, should be a 
highest graduation of honor, 728. See 
Universities, English. 



Unconditioned (the) : what, 19 ; incon- 
ceivable, 21, 27-29 ; not the indiffer- 
ence of the Absolute and Infinite, which. 
as contradictories, exclude each other, 



28, 35 ; Kant's doctrine of, 22 ; Schil- 
ling's doctrine of, 25 ; Hegel's doctrine 
of, 30 ; Cousin's doctrine of, 30 ; Au- 
thor's doctrine of, 20, 24, 567, sq. ; 
doctrine of the Conditioned, a contrast 
to the doctrine of theUnconditioned, 574. 

Absolute (the), what properly, 19, 20; 
what etymologically, 20. 

Infinite (the), what properly, 21, 28, 
33 ; verses on, 44. 

Testimonies quoted on the Uncon- 
ditioned (beside Cousin, Kant, Schelling, 
Hegel, Oken), Aristotle 33, Augustin 
22, Jacob Boehme 28, Buddhists 28, 
Goethe 17, Frederic Jacobi 27, 28, Jo- 
annes Sarisburiensis 27, Manilius 26, 
Orpheus 29, St. Paul 22, Platonists and 
Fathers 27, 29, Plotinus 27, Plutarch 

27, St. Prosper 27, Rejected Addresses 

28, Remi 14, Scaliger (Julius Caesar) 
596, Seneca 27, Varro 28, &c. — See also 
Ignorantia Docta, and Knowledge, rel- 
ativity of, and Occult Causes. 

University : meaning of the term, 470- 
478 ; ends which it should accomplish, 
689-709 ; properly, the general school 
for liberal instruction, the Faculty of 
Arts ; the other Faculties being only 
special Schools, 690. 

Universities, Old and New contrasted, 
697 ; British, all need regeneration or 
reform, 661, 723, et alibi. 

Universities, English : their present ille- 
gality, 383-429, 430-457; consist of 
the University proper and of the Col- 
leges, 386 ; the University not a con- 
geries of Colleges, 395, 450, 462, 501 ; 
a right Collegial or Tutorial system in 
combination with a right University or 
Professorial system affords the condition 
of a perfect academical discipline, 398. 
— Oxford (more particularly), its present 
illegality, 384 ; history of its legal sys- 
tem, 387-394 ; history of its illegal sys- 
tem, 394-429; these contrasted, 436, 
437 ; illegal suppression of the Uni- 
versity or Professorial, and illegal in- 
trusion of the Collegial or Tutorial 
instruction, 389-399 ; vices of the latter, 
as actually constituted, 394-399; rela- 
tive importance of Collegiate institutions 
— in the Italian Universities, 400 — in 
Paris, 400^103— in Louvain, 402, 663, 
sq. — in German Universities, 403, 406 — 
history of their rise and progress in the 
English Universities, 406-429 ; how the 
Halls fell, and from their # ruins the Col- 
leges arose, 409-413 ; how the Tutor 



7P4 



INDEX. 



superseded the Professor, 413-422 ; 
how this was accomplished through a 
violation of oath and statute by the Col- 
legial Heads, 418-447, 421-429; by 
them perjury enforced on all the mem- 
bers of the University, 421-426, 519, 
448, 525 ; this common to Cambridge 
and its Heads, 415 ; the obligation of 
subscription to religious articles thus 
sublated, 448, 512, 513 ; while the value 
of the University education was lowered, 
its expense was raised, for the profit of 
the Colleges, and to keep the academi- 
cal numbers down to their means of 
accommodation, 418 ; a reform must 
come from without, 451 ; testimonies 
of Crevicr, Locke, and Agrippa to this, 
429, 452. Reviewer's allegations against 
the governors of the English Universi- 
ties vindicated, and his charges only 
those of the statutes themselves, 426- 
429. Table of the. Oxford Houses, in 
the order of their comparative efficiency, 
as organs of education, 672, 673 ; plan 
for the improvement of collegia! and 
academical instruction, 725-753. En- 
glish Universities, how and how not 
wealthy, 707, sq. 
Universities : English, on admission of 
Dissenters to, 458-499, 500-525 ; supe- 
rior liberality in this respect of the Italian 
Universities, which admitted Protest- 
ants, even as Professors, 356, sq. ; 
claim of Dissenters for admission into 
the public University of the strongest 
and clearest, 458-463 ; not so clear and 
strong into the Colleges, 459-462, 509 ; 
ignorant confusion of the University with 
the Colleges generally prevalent, 462, 
463, 501 ; game at cross-purposes by 
the friends and opponents of this meas- 
ure, 459, 462, 463, 500, sq. ; how Dis- 
senters to be admitted without violating 
principle of domestic superintendence, 
464—469 ; and without violating prin- 
ciple of religious instruction, 469, 576, 
477-480. Do religious Tests in Uni- 
versities ensure in them religious teach- 
ers^ — the negative maintained, 480- 



499 ; these of old abandoned in the 
Italian Universities, and latterly, after 
the German, in the Dutch, 482. Have 
the Heads of the English Universities 
proved faithful Trustees ? No, 503- 
514. Are the academic oaths obligatory 
and permanently obligatory on all mem- 
bers of the English Universities to resist 
the admission of Dissenters'! 514-522; 
Oxford Heads agreed to propose a re- 
peal of the academic tests, and why 
their resolution was rescinded, 514. 

University Patronage : theory and history 
of, 345-382 ; character of this trust, 
346 ; its end, 347 ; conditions of its 
proper organization, 349-354 ; in Pad- 
ua, 354 — in Pisa, 355 — in Leyden, 356- 
362 — in German Universities, 362 — in 
Goettingen, 364 ; German authorities, 
Michaelis 365, Meiners 366, Schleier- 
macher 368 ; in the Scottish Universi- 

. ties, 368 ; by a Municipality, 368-372 ; 
here patrons solicited as for a favor, and 
this not felt as an insult, 371, 643 ; by 
University itself, 372-377; by the 
Crown, 377; systems of Scottish pa- 
tronage have wrought as ill as possible, 
375-377 ; patronage by Curators the 
best, 378 ; plan for their appointment in 
Edinburgh, 379-381 : recommendation 
of by Burgh Commissioners, 644, sq. — 
See 640, sq., for Edinburgh. 



Vernunft and Verstand, modern German 

reversal of, 12, 14. 
Vives, quoted, 698, 703, and elsewhere. 



Ward (Mr. G. R. M.), his translation of 
the Oxford Statutes and Preface, 525 ; 
extracts from, 687, sq. 

Whately (Archbishop), his Elements of 
Logic, 128-169. 

Whewell (Rev. Dr.) on the study of Math- 
ematics, 257-324 ; his letter, with re- 
plies, 313-324. 

Whole and Part. Sec Logic. 

Wilson (Professor John), 576. 

Woolley (Rev. Dr.), 159. 

Wyttenbach, 699, 712. 



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